Enough
by Rae325
Summary: Post "The Miller's Daughter." Regina, Emma, and Henry need some time away from Storybrooke. A road trip of healing, hope, and family.
1. Chapter 1

_I have two problems: 1) In my mind Regina and Emma are already together; 2) It hurts to watch Regina cry, and all I want to do is write something to make it a tiny bit better. Consequently, here is a little post-_The Miller's Daughter_ vignette. Let's say that in this story Emma and Regina were lovers, but things went down hill between them after the Archie incident. Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

Emma can feel it. Standing on a dirt road in the middle of the forest, she is consumed with pain and despair. There's no thought to what happens next, really. She just knows that she _needs _to be with Regina. She concentrates on Regina, on wrapping her arms around her, on taking the pain away. And the next thing Emma sees is a whirl of purple smoke, and then Gold's shop.

Emma is disoriented for a second and just as she gets her bearings, Regina flicks her hand sending Emma flying across the room so that she is no longer standing between the former queen and Snow White. Emma looks at the two women in front of her. Regina's eyes are fixed on Snow with a glare more full of hatred than Emma has ever seen. The sheriff reaches out a hand and casts a barrier spell around herself and Regina, trapping them and Cora's body inside.

Regina attempts to break the barrier down, and she comes damn close on the first try.

"Go!" Emma growls at her parents.

"We're not leaving you with her," Snow says. This is her fault, and she will not let her decision hurt her daughter.

Emma turns to her mother, a look of anger in her eyes. "Get out of here."

Gold doesn't need to be told twice, and he is already out the door by the time David pulls Snow out of the shop, recognizing that their presence can only make this worse. Emma spares only a moment's thought about how foolish she was to trust Rumplestilskin before she focuses entirely on the woman in front of her.

Regina rages against the barrier, throwing her magic against it again and again. Emma stands and walks towards the brunette slowly, cautiously.

"I'm sorry," Emma whispers. "I'm so sorry."

"Did you help them do this?" Regina asks, sounding for the first time like the Evil Queen Emma has been told she was.

"No, I would never…" Emma says crouching down next to her former lover. "Regina." Emma wants to reach out and touch the tear stained cheeks, wants to feel that skin against hers again. "I'm sorry," Emma repeats, because she is. No matter what Regina has done, she didn't deserve this. She had been trying so hard, and Emma had left her all alone. She had left town with Rumplestilskin as Regina spiraled down further and further.

"Regina, the last thing your mother said to you," Emma says, unsure of how she knows this. She just does. The connection she feels to Regina is stronger than it has ever been.

"Don't," Regina whispers, looking down at Cora's body. The rage is fading away, the devastation taking hold of her once more.

"You would have been enough for her. If she had her heart, all she would have wanted was you."

The sob that echoes in the small room breaks Emma's heart. She can't take it anymore. She slides her body behind Regina and takes her chances.

Arms wrap around Regina, and she stiffens. "Don't," she says. Emma is going to manipulate her, the same way the rest of them did. The blonde will offer love and sympathy, all to protect Snow White, all to keep Regina from seeking the vengeance that she so deserves.

"I'm here Regina."

For a minute Regina lets herself sink into Emma's embrace. The former queen remembers those nights, those fleeting nights when they had been together. A tangled mess of bodies and breath and heat, and for those moments Regina had been at peace. Even if Emma is manipulating her, the touch feels oh so good.

But Emma keeps talking. She keeps talking, and Regina can no longer lose herself in the faint reminders of something that she had fooled herself into thinking felt like love. "You would have been better than power and hatred and vengeance. She wouldn't have needed any of it if she had been able to love you how she should have." Regina sobs and her head lolls forward. Emma reaches close to the brunette's ear, "The way I know you love Henry."

"Henry hates me."

"He doesn't. Please Regina, I need you to listen to me. I'm not saying this to protect Snow. I'm saying this because if you kill her it will destroy everything you've worked for. Being a mother would have been enough for Cora. Isn't it enough for you?"

"Don't do that!" Regina screams, pulling out of Emma's grasp. "You took him from me. You took my son from me, and now you're going to taunt me?!"

"I shouldn't have kept you from Henry. I shouldn't have taken him away."

"You're lying to me," Regina says in a small voice. "Don't do that." She sounds to Emma like a broken child, like a little girl in pain lashing out. Emma wants so badly to hold Regina. To hold on tight and forget about everything else, because the last time that Emma's mind hadn't been racing and panicked had been when she was in Regina's arms. Maybe if they could just get back there and be still for a moment, they could find a way to make it right.

"I don't know what to do here," Emma says crawling in front of Regina and trying to ignore the fact that there is a dead body between them. "I screwed up. I know that. I should have believed you about Archie, but I was an idiot. And then I just left town with Henry, and I shouldn't have left you alone like that. I should have done better, I know that."

Regina looks up at Emma like she wants to believe the blonde so badly. This is Emma's chance. "I screwed things up, and I kind of need you to give me another chance. What we had…" Emma trails off, because it's too hard to say the word _love_.

"I should have been what you needed me to be, but I'm barely holding on here Regina! Rumplestilskin is telling me that I have magic. His son is Henry's father. The whole town looks at me like I'm the goddamned savior." Emma stops and takes a breath, and for the first time today she sees caring in Regina's eyes. "I can't do this alone," Emma says, a desperate sob escaping her lips. "I can't do this without you. _Please_."

"So you can't leave me, ok?" Emma says, a small smile on her tear streaked face. "You can't become some stupid Evil Queen again."

"I don't know what else to do," Regina whispers. She feels so lost, and she wants to let Emma take care of her. For once she just wants to let go.

Emma takes advantage of the shift in Regina's demeanor and moves behind the brunette again. It's the only position in which Emma can hug Regina as she holds tight to her mother's lifeless body. Emma wraps her arms around Regina's chest, one hand slipping beneath Regina's jacket so that the brunette can feel the heat of Emma's palm against her skin. "I'm here, Regina."

Emma grasps the skin of Regina's shoulder tightly. "I'm right here." She presses her face against the brunette's cheek, letting their tears mingle.

"She loved me," Regina whimpers, before her cries begin again in earnest. Long, low moans that stab at Emma's chest.

"I'm here."


	2. Chapter 2

Emma sets Cora's body in the coffin. Using magic is frighteningly instinctual with Regina beside her. Emma had offered to lift Cora's body and had been surprised when Regina had agreed. But when the former queen had stood from the floor of Gold's shop, shaky and disoriented, Emma wondered whether Regina would have been able to focus to perform the spell herself.

"Do you want me to give you some time alone with her?" Emma asks once the body is laid out before them.

"You can leave. Thank you," Regina replies without looking at the sheriff.

"I didn't ask whether you wanted me to leave. I was just offering to stand outside if you wanted a moment."

"And what if I want you to go?"

"I can't do that," Emma says, feeling braver than she has in a long time. But she understands that she cannot make another mistake. Regina is letting Emma take care of her right now, and it's a second chance that the blonde didn't expect.

"And why is that Miss Swan?" Regina says, trying to turn her face into its impassive mask.

Emma's heart is beating so hard that her chest hurts. She thinks about explaining how she understands what Regina is going through.

Emma knows this type of pain. She remembers the promises of a mother. She remembers believing that she would have a mother's love in the first few foster homes. The pain and disappointment of those losses had ensured that by the time Emma reached ten years old she had stopped believing at all. So perhaps she understands better than most what it's like to have the fleeting hope of love only to have it ripped away.

Emma almost lies and says she's doing this for Henry. But then she closes her eyes, and all she can see is Regina's face when it was open and exposed, sobbing and looking like a beautiful lost child.

Until a year ago Emma had no attachments in the world, and now she has far too many. She doesn't need another one. But seeing Regina like that – clinging to her mother's body, crying, and begging – oh god, Regina Mills was begging – her mother not to leave her – had stirred something inside Emma that she has long refused to acknowledge.

So she says it:

"I love you."

Regina looks at Emma like she doesn't believe the words she is hearing. "I know it's crazy," Emma says. "I know you're grieving, and I'm sure that this complicated, confusing relationship we have is the last thing you want to think about, but I need you to know that you aren't alone. That you're loved. That _I _love you."

Regina just stares at Emma, and it makes the blonde nervous. She can see that the brunette is standing on a precipice. One wrong step and she will hurt someone. One wrong step and she will be lost.

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to help you get through this."

Regina wants so badly for this to be real. She wants so badly for this offer of love and comfort to not be a lie. She doesn't move.

Emma tries her best to smile. "I'll stay right here with you then." She takes Regina's hand and they stare at the coffin.

Regina lays a single rose on her mother's chest. She places a kiss to the cold forehead. It's an eerie moment of déjà vu. But this time when she stands back up from her mother's cold dead body, Emma is next to her, a warm hand holding on tightly.

* * *

Emma follows Regina into her house without a question of whether the former queen wants her to stay.

Hands shake as Regina fills the tea kettle (Emma is both relieved and disappointed that they'll be drinking tea and not liquor).

"Do you want me to do it?" Emma asks awkwardly. She's never comforted someone before. Never taken care of someone other than herself. Not before Henry. And she isn't sure she's doing a good job of that anyway.

"I can make tea myself," Regina snaps.

Emma sees Regina's face change immediately. Fear washes over her. Imperceptible to anyone else perhaps, but Emma knows that look intimately. Knows that the brunette thinks she's just pushed Emma away. Just lost the only thing that she might have left.

"Ok," Emma says, "I'll get the mugs."

They drink in silence. Emma hates tea. It's too bitter no matter how many sugars she puts in it. Regina used to tease her for using so much sugar. Back when they tried this the first time. Emma wonders if she will ever hear that deep, rich laugh again.

"I'm sorry I'm not better at this," Emma says in the awkward silence.

"I wouldn't know," Regina replies. "No one has ever –" she stops because it sounds like self-pity, and that is something she had promised herself she wouldn't indulge in years ago (as a child bound in the air by her mother – _no, she won't think of that now_). "Thank you," she offers simply.

* * *

Emma checks her phone. "I have about a million missed calls and texts from Henry asking if you're ok."

Regina's face lights up, and Emma watches as the brunette hides her response, refusing to let herself hope.

"Do you want to call him back?" Emma asks.

"I'm sure he doesn't want to speak to me," Regina replies trying to make her face look anything but devastated now.

Emma picks up the phone, and Regina turns her back. Whether to give Emma privacy or to hide tears, the blonde doesn't know.

Regina hears the hum of her son's voice on the other end of the phone. She can't make out the words, just the soft sound that is all him. She can't bear what her relationship with her son has been reduced to. She wants to crawl into that coffin with her mother.

And then Emma is holding out the phone for her to take. For a minute Regina doesn't understand. And then she takes the phone, holds it up to her ear, and tries to find a voice.

"Hi Henry," Regina manages. It's high pitched and tightly controlled, and she hopes that Henry doesn't hear in her voice what she does: more need than she has ever felt in her life. It's a burden to put on a child, and she doesn't want him to be with her because of guilt or obligation anymore than she wants him to be with her out of fear or because of magic.

"Hi Mom," he says sounding incredibly nervous. It's been so long since they've spoken.

"How are you sweetheart?" Regina asks, pouring all the love she has for him into every syllable. It feels imperative that he knows just how loved he is.

"I'm fine, Mom," he tells her because it seems absurd that she would be asking about him right now. "I'm sorry about Cora."

"Thank you."

"Emma said you were really tired, but I'll come over tomorrow, ok?"

It's a reason to wake up in the morning. "I would love that." She holds the phone to her ear in silence for another moment listening to her son breathing. "Good night, Henry. I love you."

"I love you too." He trips over the words, awkward and unsure. But Regina doesn't notice. It's the first time he's told her in two years. It's the most beautiful sound in the world.

She clutches the phone in her hands after they hang up, a lifeline to something that could so easily be a figment of her broken mind.

* * *

"We could have had a chance," Regina says as she packs all her mother's things into boxes. She had insisted on doing it tonight. She wants the reminders gone.

A red shirt goes into the box. It had once been Regina's. Now it's haunted. Like so much is. "If Snow hadn't killed her." She seethes. The rage is familiar and comforting. A promise of oblivion.

"Your mother and Rumple, they murdered her."

"Yes," Emma agrees. Somehow the murder itself feels less cruel to Emma than the manipulation. Snow had promised Regina the love she had never had – the love that Snow knew damn well that Regina had longed for her whole life. She had used that to break Regina, to make her kill her own mother. It is unspeakably cruel.

Even if Regina didn't need Emma, the sheriff doesn't think she could go home now. Her mother doesn't understand what it's like to be without love, to be hollow inside, to have nothing to fill those spaces but bravado to cover the doubt and the hate. It feels like an impossibly deep chasm standing between Emma and Snow.

"They deserve to pay for what they did."

"Did it ever make you happy?" Emma asks.

"I never got my revenge." More shirts. All Regina's once. All ruined by memories of weeks that somehow had changed everything. Thrown in a box. _What will she do with it? Who wants donated clothes worn by two evil queens?_

"You separated Snow and David for 28 years. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the only time during the curse when you were happy was when you had Henry."

She's not wrong.

Henry had been the end of lifetimes of loneliness. He had been the first joy Regina had felt since the ashes of Daniel's heart fell from her mother's hand.

The next words take Emma's breath away. "I ruined everything." It's the first time she's heard Regina blame herself.

"It's not ruined," Emma promises. Regina tries to believe.

* * *

Regina needs to bathe. As she brushes her teeth, standing in front of a mirror and avoiding her own gaze, she becomes acutely awake that she held her mother's dead body in these clothes, that she pressed her hands, her mouth to her mother's cold flesh.

Emma is beside Regina; they're brushing their teeth together. It's something they rarely did when they had been sleeping together. Neither of them is used to sharing a bed, and most nights Emma had snuck out before it was time for a bedtime routine. But something has shifted between them now.

Any comfort they had offered each other in the past had been by virtue of presence: the reassuring sound of another human being breathing in a cold, lonely room.

Regina puts her toothbrush down and stands not moving.

"Are you ok?" Emma mumbles around a mouth full of toothpaste. She cringes at her question. _Of course not._ She spits and rinses.

Eyes meet and the stare is almost too intense. They want to break it. But they stay.

"What can I do?"

Regina needs so much. So much to change. So much to heal. It's hard to imagine how to get to anywhere remotely _ok_ from where she is now.

"I-" her voice dies in her throat. She wants Emma to hold her, just hold her, and let her forget. She can't say it. "I'm going to take a bath."

"Ok," Emma says. She's almost frightened to leave Regina alone in a room with razors. The brunette has never been suicidal before; homicide has always been more her style. But this quiet, sorrowful Regina is new, and Emma doesn't know what to expect. "Well, I'll be right outside."

It takes more courage than Regina knew she had. Or more desperation maybe. "Would you stay with me?"

"Of course," Emma says immediately, hoping she doesn't sound too eager.

Regina turns the water on, adjusting the temperature so it's hot enough to burn just a little. Emma looks lost as to what to do with herself; she fidgets nervously.

Regina thinks of all the times she sat with Henry while he took a bath, leaning over the tub to wash his hair, or just sitting on the closed toilet seat keeping him company because he didn't want to be away from his mommy.

"You can join me if you want," Regina says, bravery apparently remaining. Emma flushes red, opens her mouth, but words don't come out. It's adorable, and Regina actually smiles. That smile – that faint smile – warms Emma in places she didn't know existed.

"I'm not asking for pity sex, Miss Swan. I just thought that perhaps you would enjoy a bath after today." It's far from the truth. The truth is that Regina wants to feel Emma's body against her own. The truth that Regina doesn't know is that Emma wants this just as badly.

Emma pulls her shirt off. She unhooks her bra almost shyly.

Emma is fully naked before Regina begins to remove her clothes. "Can I help?" Emma asks as she lifts the brunette's shirt off her body. Emma only allows herself a glance at the body she adores, instead keeping her eyes trained on Regina's.

Emma sinks into the tub first, leaving Regina no choice but to settle her back against Emma's chest. For a minute it feels like too much. Too much trust. Too much love.

Emma works on instinct. She's never had someone to teach her how to care for someone, so all she has is what her gut tells her. She lets her hands caress up and down Regina's arms, their fingers intertwining. She feels some of the tension ease from the former queen's body. She seems so small, so breakable here.

They sit without a word until it becomes too intense, too intimate, and Regina reaches for body wash. Emma takes it from her hands. The blonde has seen this in movies. It's what you do for a lover or for a child. Tonight Regina feels like both.

Emma's hands rub soapy bubbles along Regina's skin. It's been so long since Regina has been touched. The only hands that she has felt in the last weeks were her mother's. Coaxing hands on her back or running through her hair: a parody of motherly love. Regina knows that now after seeing how her mother's entire face had changed once her heart was in her chest.

"Tilt your head back," Emma orders. Water saturates dark locks. And then Emma's fingers are in her hair. Strong hands are massaging Regina's scalp, and her chest tightens at the onslaught of emotions.

Emma rinses the shampoo away, and Regina is grateful that she uses conditioner, because all she wants is to feel Emma's hands again.

Once Emma has washed the brunette, she waits awkwardly for a minute, unsure of what to do next. Regina settles her body against Emma's again. The former queen wants to say thank you, wants Emma to know that no one has ever taken care of her like this before, wants to say that it means more than anything has meant to her in so very long. But those admissions would mean vulnerability, and sixty years of experience have taught Regina never to allow someone to have that kind of power over her.

Regina takes Emma's hands in her own, lifting one to her mouth and placing a soft kiss there. _It's more than enough_, Emma thinks. That kiss says something that Regina can't say in words. Not tonight, not for a long time, maybe. But it's there in the gentleness, in the reverence. And it's enough.


	3. Chapter 3

_I didn't intend to continue this story, as I felt that the end of chapter two left it in a completed place. But unfortunately the story kept bouncing around in my head until I put it down on paper (or virtual paper, as the case may be). And as long as I'm writing the story, I figure I should share. I'm not sure exactly where this is going (only that it will involve a road trip, dealing with the fallout of 2x16, and an exploration of Emma and Regina's relationships with each other and their son) or how many chapters it will be. Hope you enjoy the chapter, and please let me know if you're interested in reading more._

* * *

Regina's dreams are plagued by grotesque images of her mother's rotting flesh, of Cora binding Regina's small hands and legs, of Regina brutally killing her mother, her father, Henry, her body stained with their blood. She sleeps uneasily, waking repeatedly in a cold sweat before drifting off again only to see more horrific images.

"Henry," Regina gasps in a strangled sob, the image of herself reaching into her son's chest tormenting the sleeping woman.

The cry wakes Emma, ever the light sleeper, ever alert after years of living in homes where she could never let her guard down. "Regina," Emma says, reaching out a hand to shake the woman beside her. The former queen settles and, still asleep, rolls over so that her body is flush against Emma's.

In her sleep it seems that Regina knows how to seek comfort. She presses herself closer and closer to Emma's chest, curling into the warmth of the blonde's body.

Emma wants to run. She doesn't want to be needed like this. She doesn't want to be the thing holding this broken woman together. She stays awake the rest of the night.

Regina wakes up to the early morning sunlight feeling like she's barely slept at all. Her eyes are gravely and her body aches. And then she feels it. Warmth. Arms encircling her. The rise and fall of Emma's chest.

Regina lets herself feel it for a second – just a second for this comfort. And then she pulls away, trying to be as dignified as possible after waking up in a fetal position in Emma's arms. "Good morning."

"Good morning," Emma replies, nervous and completely lost as to how this is about to play out.

"Thank you for last night," Regina says as she stands from the bed.

Evidently, Emma thinks, she isn't the only one prone to running. "Regina." The brunette stops but doesn't turn around. "It wasn't just last night. I want us to…" she trails off – really, Emma isn't sure exactly what she wants here. "It wasn't just for the night, ok?"

"Ok," Regina whispers before she walks into the bathroom and closes the door behind her.

* * *

Emma is making coffee when Regina comes downstairs in a pair of leggings and a long shirt. It is perhaps as close as Regina gets to casual wear. "What are you doing?" the brunette asks.

"I know I'm not a great cook, but I do know how to make coffee," Emma says, making herself perfectly at home and pulling two mugs down from the cabinets.

Regina does not look amused.

"Look Regina," Emma says, her tone becoming serious. "I told you yesterday, I'm probably no good at this at all, but I am staying."

That is all it takes for Regina to feel tears well in her eyes. "Why?" she whispers, hating that her voice is small and raspy. Her throat burns with the attempt not to cry at the fact that Emma is still here.

"You just lost your mother, and whatever she did, I know that you're grieving. So I'm going to help you."

It's clearly the wrong thing to say. "Get out. I don't want you to stay out of pity. I'll be just fine alone. I always am."

"Are you really?" Emma says, taking the bait. "Because cursing an entire land is not exactly my definition of fine."

Emma expects a come back, but all she gets is silence and a look of heartbreak on Regina's face. "Shit," Emma says. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I'm here because I love you, and that kind of scares the hell out of me. You need to give me a little time to get used to saying it, ok? But that's the reason…I'm here because I love you."

"I can't…" Regina wants to say the words back, but she can still hear her mother's voice: _love is weakness_.

"You don't have to say anything," Emma tells the brunette. "Let's just have some coffee."

They sit at the table together, sipping coffee that is strong and bitter. "Thank you," Regina says, "I know that I'm not very good at saying it, but I appreciate what you're doing."

Emma smiles, and for a moment she feels like maybe they will be all right. She reaches forward and takes Regina's hand.

"After breakfast, I just want to freshen up, and then we can go pick up Henry," Emma says, her hand still wrapped securely around Regina's.

The way the brunette gasps makes Emma realize that Regina never expected for Emma to actually allow her to see Henry. Emma thinks for a minute that they're both too fucked up to fix. Then Regina squeezes the blonde's hand, and Emma knows that she can't run.

* * *

Regina paces back and forth on the sidewalk outside of Granny's. Emma and Regina had agreed that it would probably be for the best if Regina didn't go inside. So the former queen is standing outside avoiding the people she had once cursed and wondering whether her son is trying to find a way out of seeing her.

Emma's hand is on Henry's back as they walk towards Regina, and the brunette realizes with a pang that Emma truly looks like a mother now.

Henry walks over to Regina nervously. The last time he had seen her was the day Emma had come home. So much has happened since then.

"Hi Henry," Regina says, looking at her son with a soft smile on her face. She looks nothing like the Evil Queen in his book right now; she looks like his mom.

He wraps his arms around her. He wants to tell her about New York. About learning to ride a horse and sword fight. About finding his father.

Henry stays wrapped in his mother's arms. She rubs circles on his back, just like she has since he was an infant. It's comforting and familiar in a way that nothing has been for him in a long time.

When Henry finally pulls back he sees that his mom is crying. She wipes her cheeks quickly, giving him a bright smile.

He doesn't really know what to say, so he asks, "Can we go home?"

It's the right thing to say. Regina lets out a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob of joy. Her smile is wider than any Henry has ever seen on her face.

* * *

Regina is fussing over Henry, spoiling him with cookies and cocoa while he talks her ear off about New York.

Emma decides to take the moment to do something she doesn't particularly want to do: call back her parents. She walks into the backyard, takes a deep breath, and dials David's number. "Emma! Where are you?" Apparently, they're skipping the pleasantries.

"I'm at Regina's."

"What?! Are you ok? Where is Henry?"

"I'm fine. Henry's here too."

"How could you let her near him?" She shouldn't be angry really, because she's been as adamant about keeping Henry away from Regina as her parents had been.

"She's his mother," Emma hisses angrily.

"_You're _his mother."

"Regina is …or we both are," Emma corrects, suddenly confused about what exactly her role is in Henry's life. "The point is that we had no right to take Henry away from Regina."

"No right? Emma, she's going to try to kill your mother."

"Actually, right now Regina is making hot chocolate and spending time with her son. She's not planning anything other than what to cook for dinner. She isn't a threat, David."

"How can you say that?"

"I know her," Emma says, echoing her words from the day they thought Archie had been killed. Emma promises herself not to back down from her words again.

David seems to sense that he can't win this argument. "When are you coming home? Your mother needs you. This has all been really hard for her."

"Good," Emma says, unable to hold back the anger. "She tricked Regina into killing her own mother."

"Mary Margaret was protecting everyone, Emma. Cora was evil."

In that moment it doesn't matter that Emma knows that Cora was evil, that she was a threat, that she would have killed Emma and her family without a second thought. All Emma can think of is Regina sobbing and clinging to her mother's body. "I'm staying here for a while."

"You can't."

"I'm a grown woman," Emma says, snapping the phone shut.

She walks back inside, slamming the door too loudly as she enters the kitchen. Henry is obliviously drinking his cocoa, but Regina notices as Emma storms through the room and into the living room.

"What's wrong?" Regina asks, following Emma. The brunette's voice is gentle and motherly; like she has forgotten to switch from the Regina that loves her son dearly to the woman she is with the rest of the world.

"We should take a road trip," Emma says pacing the length of the room. She needs to get out of here. She had wanted to find her family her whole life, but right now she wishes she hadn't, because then she wouldn't feel horrified by what they had done, by how little they understand about who she is or how she sees the world.

"What?"

"We should take Henry and get out of here."

"I thought you weren't running anymore," Regina comments, but without a hint of malice.

"It's not running if I go with you and Henry," she tries, but Regina can clearly see that the blonde does in fact want to escape something. "I just need to get away from this town and from my parents. I'm not who they want me to be, and they're really not who I want them to be either. I just need to get away for a while."

Emma stops pacing and walks to Regina. "It'll be good for us all I think, to leave for a little while."

"Trying to get me away from Mary Margaret?" Regina asks.

"Yes, but not to protect her. I promised to believe in you, so if you say you won't hurt her-"

"I never said that."

Emma frowns. "Are you going to hurt her?"

Regina thinks of Henry, of Emma, of how much she stands to lose if she attacks Snow. "No."

"Ok, then. Like I was saying, I believe you. But I don't understand why you would want to stay in a town where you have to look at her everyday. What's keeping you here?"

The realization hits Regina with a mixture of relief and trepidation. "Nothing."

"When's the last time you've taken a vacation?" Emma asks with a playful smile.

"Never."

"Then I think you're past due."


	4. Chapter 4

Regina has been fighting for so long that she had almost forgotten what it is like to let go. But in the passenger's seat of a bright yellow vw beetle that's speeding towards the town line, there really isn't anything else she can do. For 29 years this town had been her home. It hadn't made her happy, but it had been safe. She had been in control here. But Henry's in the backseat now – talking incessantly about cinnabons and pizza – and she would go anywhere to be with him.

Regina feels the magic draining from her body as they pass the town line. She wonders for a minute if it would be possible to start over, to be the girl she had been before she let the darkness into her heart. But of course such things are not possible.

"Are you ok Mom?" Henry asks, leaning forward and resting his hand on Regina's headrest.

"I'm just fine, my dear." She wonders if maybe she really can be ok.

* * *

An hour later and they're working their way down Route 1. Henry had fallen asleep a few minutes after leaving Storybrooke, and Regina wonders how much rest he's gotten in these last few weeks.

Emma alternates between watching the road and watching the woman next to her. Regina doesn't seem to notice; she's too busy staring out the window with an expression of wonder on her face. Emma marvels at how the smile transforms the brunette's face, makes her look younger, unencumbered, and impossibly beautiful.

Regina is lost in this feeling that she hasn't had since she was a girl: that the world is new, that there are possibilities. She takes Emma's hand before she can give it a second thought. The gesture catches Emma off guard; it's comfortable and domestic, the kind of thing that normal people do in normal relationships.

They're both silent for a few minutes, letting the rapid beating of their hearts slow.

"After Leopold died, I began to travel the kingdom. I spent days riding to distant lands." It had been the first freedom Regina had ever truly known. She doesn't say that. "I forgot how much I've missed that."

"Well, stick with me. I'm the queen of traveling."

"You still haven't told me where we're going first," Regina reminds the other woman, unsure of how she let Emma get her into a car without a clear statement of their destination.

"Well," Emma says tentatively, suspecting that there will be complaints. After all, Emma has rarely sees Regina wearing anything besides power suits and heels, and those will definitely not be suitable for their first destination. "I was thinking we could spend a few days at Acadia National Park."

"Oh!" Regina says, turning to Emma. "I've seen pictures of Acadia. It looks so beautiful." The way Regina's face lights up; Emma wonders sadly how much time the brunette spent fantasizing about the world outside Storybrooke. "I think Henry will like it."

"Yeah," Emma agrees. "I think so too."

_What the hell is this? _Emma wonders. Regina is being nice; she's excited about hiking; they're taking their son on a vacation. This might be the most insane thing Emma has ever done. She's fought ogres and dragons, but this might top it all.

* * *

Emma is a few feet behind Regina as they make their way up Gorham Mountain. Emma could probably try harder to keep up with the brunette, but the view from behind Regina is almost as good as the view from the side of the mountain. _Regina would kill Emma for thinking that. But god, do those running pants make her ass look fantastic._

Regina stops at a lookout point, taking in the bright blue water. "It's beautiful," she comments to no one in particular.

"I didn't take you for a nature kind of girl," Emma says standing next to Regina and looking out at the bay.

Emma watches as Regina's face darkens for a moment. "I used to be a lot of things," she says sadly. Running away to the hills near her family's home had always offered an escape from her mother's cruelty to young Regina. And she and Daniel had shared so many wonderful moments in the woods, savoring the fact that they didn't need to hide anything there.

Emma takes Regina's hand in her own. "I hope you'll share them with me one day."

Regina doesn't think she has the strength for that, but hearing that Emma wants to know these things about her makes Regina feel more loved than she can ever remember.

* * *

"This is my favorite beach in the whole world," Emma says as they walk onto the secluded Sand Beach. It's the offseason, which means that they have the area to themselves save for the seagulls flying overhead.

"This is so cool!" Henry tells Emma, taking off a second later to climb on the rocks.

Regina watches him like a hawk as she and Emma sit down on the cool sand. He's her baby, and no matter how much he pulls away, she can't turn off the overprotective mother.

"I lost my virginity on this beach," Emma says out of the blue.

"Excuse me."

"I ran away here a few times when I was in a group home in Bangor. Hitched a ride with a few guys when I was 14."

"Emma, that's dangerous!"

Emma chuckles. "I learned to take care of myself early." Regina almost continues to chide Emma, but thinks better of it and bites her tongue. "Turned out well. I had a nice vacation, became a woman," Emma says with sarcasm and a smile, "and then got hauled back to the group home by the cops a couple days later."

Regina doesn't know how to respond. She's overcome with guilt for her role in how Emma's childhood had turned out. Before she can think of a response, she hears Emma's voice again, light and playful, oblivious to the seriousness that has overcome Regina: "Your turn."

"My turn to what?"

"Come on Regina. I've seen pictures of your evil queen dresses. Don't pretend to be a prude now."

"Just because you've decided to blather on about your first time does not mean that I'm obligated to do the same."

"That bad, huh?" Emma says lightly. But then she looks at Regina – really looks at her – at the tight lips and the knitted brow, and oh god, are there tears in her eyes? – and Emma feels guilty instantly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed. Crap, I'm really sorry."

"It's not your fault, dear," Regina comments, looking out at the gently rolling waves in front of her. She can't look at Emma right now. Of course it isn't her fault, but she is so tightly tied in to it all, nonetheless. Regina is afraid to look and see pieces of Leopold in Emma's face, and if the brunette ever wants to have sex with Emma again (and she wants that desperately), then she cannot see those things.

Emma sees the moisture in Regina's eyes, and reaches out and takes the other woman's hand. Regina startles slightly, lost in her thoughts. She looks over at Emma, who is wearing an uncertain expression and hoping that she is doing the right thing. That earnestness, that care: it's enough to remind Regina that Emma is not Leopold; she's not Snow.

Regina loves Emma. It's a fact that the former queen knows in this moment with blinding intensity. Even if she isn't sure she'll ever be able to say it.

* * *

"Good night, kid," Emma says, as Henry walks towards his bedroom in their hotel suite.

"Night Emma," he replies, and Emma is glad that he's choosing to call her by her first name right now. She cannot imagine the look of pain on Regina's face if she heard Henry calling Emma _Mom._

"Night Mom," he says turning to Regina.

"Goodnight, sweetheart."

Henry hesitates for a moment, remaining in the hallway. Regina has always tucked him, even when he started pulling away from her, she had insisted on kissing him goodnight. Regina catches her son's hesitation, but it's too good to be true to think that he would want this from her. It would mean that he still wants _her_ to be his mother, and really, he's shown no indication of that for months.

Henry waits until Emma closes the door to the bathroom, leaving him and Regina standing awkwardly in the hall. "Do you think you could tuck me in?"

Regina smiles widely. "I would love to," she says truthfully. It's a small step, but it's something.

Henry crawls under the covers silently and waits. Regina looks at him, at the little boy who has been her every joy for 11 years, who had taught her that she was still capable of love, even if she was still learning how to love better. She hopes that he will give her a chance to show him that she is learning.

Regina leans down and tucks the blanket around Henry, creating the soft cocoon that he had always needed to go to sleep as a small child. "Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite," she whispers, and Henry smiles. He's always thought it was a silly rhyme, but it had become their tradition, and for years he wouldn't go to sleep until Regina said it.

Regina leans over and kisses Henry's head, so incredibly grateful that he's letting her do this. "I love you Henry."

"I love you too, Mom. Sleep well."

"You too baby," she tells him with a smile, leaving the room before the tears begin to fall.

* * *

Emma opens the bathroom door to find Regina sitting on the edge of the tub, staring down at something in her hands and sniffling back tears. Emma moves closer and sees that the object is a locket containing a picture of Regina on one side and Cora on the other. Emma closes the toilet seat so she can sit down next to Regina. Their knees bump, and Regina looks up, not even bothering to wipe the wetness from her face.

Emma gives the former queen a little smile. Regina's body sways towards Emma's. She still doesn't have the words to ask for what she needs.

But Emma has years of practice reading people, and she can make due without words. She reaches forward and wraps her arms around Regina. The embrace is awkward as they reach across the space between them. It's Regina who pulls Emma forward, tighter and tighter until the blonde has nowhere to go besides the other woman's lap.

The brunette cradles the younger woman to her chest tightly. Emma knows that Regina is the one that needs comforting, but this is the most secure Emma has felt in longer than she can remember.

They stay there until Regina starts to fidget, and Emma realizes that it can't be the most comfortable position for Regina to be sitting on the edge of the tub with the blonde's full weight on her.

"Come to bed with me," Emma whispers into Regina's neck. The brunette nods, and they stand, sharing a nervous, self-conscious look. The intimacy of the embrace hangs between them. Emma grasps Regina's hand and leads them to bed.

Regina drops the necklace on the bedside table before sliding under the covers. Emma's hand inches towards the brunette before withdrawing again, repeating the motion over and over until Regina puts her out of her misery. "Can you hold me?" the former queen whispers, her brow furrowing with the effort of making herself vulnerable like this. "I need…"

"What do you need?" Emma asks, rolling onto her side and looking at Regina.

"I need you." Regina looks terrified, looks like she is afraid to be hurt, to be mocked for needing someone, to be run from. Emma hates that expression so much.

"I need you too," Emma replies, snaking an arm underneath Regina and pulling the brunette onto her chest. Emma runs her hand through thick brown strands.

Regina tucks her face into Emma's chest. This way it's easier to forget the complicated relationship they have and to just feel a disembodied sense of warmth and protection and caring.

"Do you want to talk?" Emma asks, though she knows words have never been her forte. Regina shakes her head: it's still too fresh, too raw. She hasn't begun to put words to everything storming in her head. "Ok," Emma whispers with a kiss to Regina's hair. Regina listens to the faint sound of Emma's heartbeat under her ear: steady and good and alive. She lets the rhythm lull her to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Emma is grateful that Regina insisted on a suite with a kitchen when the blonde wakes up to the smell of coffee. Emma pulls on a sweatshirt to guard against the chill in the air. It's late March, and Maine is just beginning to emerge from the deep frost of winter. Snowdrifts are melting in the afternoon sun these days, but still the mornings are cold enough to make Emma want to stay in bed under the comforter. She wonders, as she pads her way into the kitchen, whether it would ever be possible to share a morning under the covers with Regina. The idea seems absurd most of the time, but after holding the former queen all night long, Emma wonders if maybe that could change.

"Good morning," Emma says, clutching a warm mug against her chest and joining Regina on the deck.

Regina turns and smiles at Emma, her face open and vulnerable in a way that Emma has always cherished being able to see. After months of sleeping together, there had begun to be these beautiful moments when Regina would look at Emma and the blonde could swear she could see everything her lover was thinking.

Regina goes back to staring at the sky in front of her, a wide expanse of pink and orange. They stand silently sipping their coffee together. Emma wonders how you rebuild trust after accusing your lover of murder, after taking her child away from her. Though of course, Emma isn't sure that trust had ever been something that lived between them.

"It's beautiful here," Regina whispers. Her lips are curved into a tiny smile, and Emma remembers what it was like before she ruined everything, before she drove Regina into her mother's arms, before everything went to shit again. Emma reaches out and takes Regina's hand, and she doesn't know who or what to thank for the fact that Regina is actually letting her in.

The door slides open a few minutes later, and both women immediately pull their hands away. "Good morning Mom."

They respond in stereo.

Regina's face turns to stone immediately, not wanting either of them to see how much it hurts to realize that her son has been calling Emma _Mom_.

And then Henry speaks, and somehow he manages to make it all right. "I've been thinking, I can't call you both _Mom_; it's too confusing. Maybe, I can call Emma _Ma_."

Emma's holds her breath, wonders how Regina will react to this, to Henry wanting to acknowledge that Emma is his mother too. When Regina's eyes fill with tears, Emma realizes how desperate the brunette is just to be a part of her son's life in anyway that he will allow. Regina smiles at Henry, seems so glad that he still wants her to be his mom. "I think that's a good idea, Henry."

Before she can think better of it, Emma grasps Regina's hand again, trying to let her know that it's ok, that Emma will never try to replace Regina, that they can both love Henry. The matching looks of surprise that meet Emma remind her that Henry is not supposed to know what's developing between his mothers. "I knew it!" He yells, a smile spreading across his face.

"Henry, there's nothing going on between Emma and me."

"You guys promised not to lie to me." He's got them there, and they both know it.

It's Emma who caves first, the memory of her son's anger after finding out about Neal still scares the hell out of her. "Come on," she says, putting a hand on Henry's shoulder and leading him to the kitchen table.

"Henry," Emma begins when the three of them are sitting down.

"You two are together, right? You're each other's true loves?"

"Woah, slow down, kid." Emma says. She glances at Regina, wishing that they had talked about this sooner, wishing that the brunette wasn't sitting there expressionless.

"It's perfect. This is how it's meant to be. You're the Savior, and you need to save the Evil Queen."

Someone who didn't know Regina might have missed the pained expression, but to Emma it's undeniable. She puts her hand on Regina's thigh, grateful when the brunette doesn't pull away. "You need to stop with that. Your mom isn't the Evil Queen."

"Yes, she is. Everyone knows that! But it's ok, because you'll save her."

Regina moves to leave the table, but Emma tugs her back. "Your mom does not need saving, and she isn't evil. You're right that I love her," Emma says with a glance at the woman next to her. "But nothing about that is meant to be. We're together because we are choosing to be."

Emma is so damn tired of things in her life being _meant to be_. She was meant to be the Savior, and fulfilling that role meant being orphaned and giving birth while handcuffed to a bed. Regina was meant to cast the curse, and for that the man she loved was killed and she was forced into marriage, into despair. _No_, this relationship is not meant to be. This they are choosing.

It all seems to go over Henry's head. "You're really in love?" he asks smiling.

It breaks Regina's heart to think that she made it so hard for Henry to have both of his mothers, so hard that this seems to him to be the only solution, the only way to have them both. She promises herself that she will be better for him.

"Yes, we are," the former queen whispers. Regina hears the gasp next to her, but she can't look at Emma. Regina can barely believe that the words came out of her mouth, that she's sitting here with two people who are fully aware that they have the power to destroy her. If they leave her, she will have nothing, be nothing.

"Cool," Henry says definitively, putting an end to the conversation. "I'm hungry. Where are we going for breakfast?"

Emma somehow manages to gather herself enough to respond. "I know a good place in town. Go get dressed."

As soon as Henry's door shuts Emma turns to Regina. "Did you mean it?"

Emma can see the conflict, can see Regina trying to decide whether to deny everything, shut down, and run like hell, or whether to believe that for the first time in her life she could find love, keep it, and maybe be happy. It's a lot to believe.

"Yes." Regina's eyes are wide with fear. "I love you," she says, eyes pleading desperately: _don't hurt me_.

Emma smiles and tears fill her eyes. She reaches forward and kisses Regina. Emma has missed this so much, missed the feeling of the former queen's lips, the sound of her soft moan.

"Come on," Emma says, wrapping her arm around her lover. "We need to get dressed before the kid starts yelling at us for not feeding him fast enough."

Regina tries to relax into Emma, to for once in her life not fight, to do something that comes so unnaturally to her and let herself be loved.

* * *

Regina and Henry had both decided on blueberry pancakes, and neither has said a word since the food arrived. Emma forgets sometimes that the best restaurant they've been to is _Granny's_, and while Granny makes a mean grilled cheese, there is a whole world of delicious food that Regina and Henry have been missing. Emma smiles to herself; she is going to have fun this trip.

"Enjoying the pancakes?" Emma asks before shoving a piece of French toast into her mouth.

"They're the best pancakes I've ever had," Henry says. "Except yours of course, Mom."

Regina laughs. "That's quite all right."

"Do you think you can start making blueberry pancakes when we get home?"

The question – the suggestion that Regina will be cooking breakfast for her son again – is enough to bring her to the verge of tears. She holds back with a smile to Henry. "I think we can work on a recipe."

The idea of _home_ fills her with dread. They've only been out of Storybrooke for a day, but already she has no desire to go back. There she's the Evil Queen. There she's a broken woman that the town takes joy in seeing defeated. Here she can just be. All anyone sees is a woman on vacation with her family. She wishes that could be all that she was.

"I personally am enjoying having people wait on me," Emma says. "I'm in no rush to go back to having to cook and clean for myself."

"I've never seen you cook," Henry comments. "Mac and cheese from a box doesn't count," he clarifies when Emma opens her mouth.

"Are we all going to live together now?" Henry asks, with the innocence of the little kid that Emma was sure he had ceased to be.

Emma sees how uncomfortable Regina looks, and the blonde isn't sure whether the other woman hates the idea or is afraid that Emma will. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, ok? We have way more vacation to enjoy before we start thinking about going home." Emma wants this conversation to end; she really doesn't want to think about where she will be living or how she will deal with her parents once she gets back to Storybrooke.

"Ok," Henry agrees. "Can we rent bikes today?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," Regina agrees, seeming to take extra joy in Emma's surprise at her enthusiasm.

"I don't know how to ride," Emma admits.

"How can you not know how to ride?!" Henry asks incredulously. Emma shrugs. "Mom can teach you."

Emma turns to Regina, who has a wicked smile on her face now. "How do _you_ know how to ride?" From what Emma saw, there were no bicycles in the Enchanted Forest.

"I learned so that I could teach Henry. I'd be happy to teach you, dear."

Emma smiles nervously. This is going to be interesting.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Thanks for the reviews, favorites, and follows. I very much appreciate the support. This chapter makes me a little nervous with regard to characterization, and I would love to read your feedback. Hope you enjoy._

* * *

"Night Henry," Emma says, turning out the lights in the living room and getting ready to follow Regina into their bedroom.

"Night Mom – Emma – uh, Ma."

Emma laughs. "That's going to take some getting used to, huh?" Truth be told, she is still uncomfortable with the kid calling her anything but Emma. She loves that he wants her to be his mother, but it also scares the shit out of her.

"I like _Ma_. It works for you."

Emma thinks for a minute about how comfortable Henry is with trusting her to be his mother. It's a kind of trust that Emma has never felt for the adults in her life. She has never called anyone _mother_ or _mom _or _ma_. She never believed that an adult would be that for her. But Henry didn't grow up like Emma. He grew up with a mother who loved him, who provided for his every need, who made him feed safe and special and cherished. Henry knows what love is because Regina showed it to him his whole life. It's a realization that makes Emma want to get down on her knees and thank Regina over and over again.

"Today was fun, wasn't it?" Henry asks.

"Except for the part when you laughed at me falling off my bike," Emma teases.

"Is your knee ok?"

"I'll be fine kid. I'm going to have your mom re-bandage it for me."

Emma watches as a tentative smile comes over Henry's face. "She's different here," he says cautiously.

Emma sits down on arm of the couch next to where Henry is standing. "Sometimes people behave in the ways that other people expect them to, because they really don't know how else to act, you know?" The confused look on Henry's face tells Emma that the answer is _no_. "Back in Storybrooke, everyone thought of your mom as the queen, so that's how she acted. But I don't think it made her very happy."

"But she's happy now, right?" Henry asks nervously.

He's breaking Emma's heart in a million ways right now. In the way that he's so hopeful. In the way that he clearly loves his mom and wants her back. In the way that he's so naïve as to not understand the damage done to Regina when she was forced to kill her own mother. In the way that he's looking at Emma to make everything all right. No one has ever depended on her like this before.

"She's getting there, I think. She's had a rough few months." It's an understatement, Emma thinks. The way that these last few months seem to have practically broken the caustic, stoic woman Emma first met is striking.

"Because of me."

"No," Emma reassures, putting her hand on Henry's arm. And then, because she really doesn't know what else to say, she tells him, "Everything's going to be ok, I promise."

Henry does his best to smile. "Night Ma," he says before opening the door to his bedroom.

"Night kid."

* * *

"You're worse than Henry," Regina chides as she cleans the wound on Emma's knee.

"It hurts," Emma whines.

"I'm sorry," Regina says, giving the cuts one last swab with antibacterial ointment. "All done. I just need to put a bandage on it." She unwraps a large band-aid and presses it to Emma's leg. "How's that?"

"Good," Emma says, before clarifying, "Still hurts though."

"Want me to kiss it and make it better?" Regina teases.

"I can think of somewhere else for you to kiss."

Regina looks up at Emma a little shocked. Things are uncomfortable for a minute, though whom are they kidding to think that this relationship isn't about to head back down this road quickly?

Regina stands up from where she is crouched in front of Emma. "Is this really what you want?" Regina asks, because she cannot imagine that Emma would want a relationship with her. Emma, even after everything she's suffered, is good. Someone like that can't possibly want Regina.

"How can you ask something like that while you're wearing that?" Emma says, trying to insert some levity and motioning at the tight exercise clothes that Regina is wearing. The vulnerability lingers on Regina's face in a way that makes Emma completely uncomfortable. The woman in front of her is present and real and breakable. "I want you," Emma confirms, "I pretty much want to rip your clothes off right now."

Regina smiles then in a way that absolutely takes Emma's breath away. This Regina – the one who giggled (actually giggled) with Henry while trying to teach Emma to bike – is someone Emma doesn't know. But god, she's beautiful.

Regina moves closer, straddling Emma's legs where the blonde is sitting on the hotel bed. The brunette joins their lips together far more gently than Emma has ever known the former queen to be.

They move back on the bed, so that Emma is lying flat with Regina above her. Even this unrecognizably gentle Regina is, of course, on top. Emma wonders, as Regina leans down and sucks at Emma's neck, if maybe it isn't just about dominance. If maybe the fact that Emma has not once been on top has something to do with the awful admission on the beach about Regina's first time. Emma wants to know, wants to understand, but that is the kind of secret that you tell someone you truly trust, and Emma knows that's not where they are yet.

Regina is kissing her way down Emma's chest, and though it's turning Emma on, the brunette's touch is, more than anything else, sweet and gentle and loving. It takes more trust than Emma knew she had in her to let Regina kiss her this way. Hands move across Emma's stomach and hips, as if memorizing every curve, every muscle.

Emma winds her hands into Regina's hair, wanting to touch, to prove to herself that this woman is real. Regina resists meeting Emma's eyes, and the blonde understands that this is all too overwhelming already.

And then Regina is between Emma's legs, and amidst the sensations Regina is coaxing from the blonde's body and the overpowering sense of love, Emma actually begins to cry. She chokes out her release in a sob, and Regina is beside her in an instant, wrapping Emma up in her arms.

Emma thinks she should be embarrassed; she has never let someone see her this vulnerable before. But she remembers that Regina had let Emma hold her while she sobbed for her mother, and that makes it easier to accept the fact that Regina is rubbing Emma's back and humming softly into her hair in the way she imagines that the brunette did for Henry when he was a baby. It's more comfort than Emma has ever known.

* * *

Emma awakens to an empty bed and a familiar sinking feeling in her gut. It always ends like this. She's always left alone. Emma considers throwing the blankets back over her head and letting herself cry for a few minutes before getting up to confirm her suspicions: that Regina and Henry are gone; that Emma is alone again. She resists the urge. The tiny bit of hope is too tantalizing, and she curses herself because she knows that it will only make her more disappointed in the end.

Emma sits up, grabs her jeans and tank top from the previous day off the floor, and walks out to the living room. The relief that washes over her when she sees Regina sitting on the couch and sipping a cup of tea is overwhelming.

"Hello dear," Regina says, smiling at her lover.

Emma tries to hide the panic that had consumed her seconds earlier as she settles down next to Regina. "What are you doing up?" Emma asks.

"I could ask the same of you."

"I was lonely in bed all by myself," Emma says with an exaggerated pout.

"Sorry," Regina mutters looking down at the mug in her hands. "I was just thinking."

"About what?" Emma asks, even though she feels like she has no right to pry when she wouldn't want to share the fears she had woken up with minutes ago.

Regina is silent for a few minutes, and when the quiet has stretched on long enough that Emma has stopped expecting an answer, the former queen speaks. "I was wondering whether it would be possible to leave everything in the past, and just have this." She motions at Emma and at the door behind which their son is sleeping.

Those words are enough for Emma to know that the woman sitting in front of her wants them to be together as much as Emma does. It's enough to make Emma admit: "That's what I want too. I think we can do it," she says, reminding herself of the hopeful girl who had been willing to run away with Neal years ago. _Don't break my heart_, Emma silently pleads.

"I don't know if I can walk away from who I was. I've been the Evil Queen for too long," she says with a sardonic expression at the mention of the moniker.

"You still want to kill Snow," Emma states without a hint of question or judgment. Regina doesn't say anything, but the truth sits there between them. And then Emma says simply – so simply that Regina almost believes that this could work: "I hope that you want to be with Henry and me more."

"I won't make you happy Emma. I'm not a good person."

Emma thinks of the curse. Of the pain that Regina caused to Emma's own parents. And then she thinks of Henry. Of a boy who knows how to love deeply. She thinks of how Regina had made her feel more loved tonight than anyone ever has before.

"That's not what I see. I still want you."

"I want you too."

"That's enough for me," Emma says with a shrug. "The last two days have probably been the happiest of my life."

"Of mine as well," Regina says, staring at Emma with wide, teary eyes.

"Then we'll make it work," Emma says like it's the simplest thing in the world.

Regina smiles, nods, tries to believe.

"What's on TV?" the blonde asks, picking up the remote from the coffee table.

"At 3 in the morning, infomercials no doubt."

"I could go for a good infomercial, what about you?" Emma asks.

Regina simply raises her eyebrow at the blonde before setting her tea down, laying a blanket across their bodies, and resting her legs on her lover's lap.


	7. Chapter 7

There had been a bit of a negotiation, but Henry had insisted that their next stop should be New York. They could visit Emma's old place in Boston on the way back; it was far more important for Regina to go to New York. This meant an eight and a half hour drive was in store for them.

"Ok, got one," Henry declares. "It's an animal."

"Is it a cat?" Emma asks.

"No, and it's too early to ask that, Ma."

"Why? It was a good guess."

Regina rolls her eyes. "You're supposed to narrow it down before guessing," the former queen instructs.

"Fine, smarty pants. You go," Emma responds.

"Is it a mammal?"

"Yes," Henry says, leaning towards the front seat. "18 questions to go."

"18 more questions?!" Emma asks, unsure of how exactly this question is supposed to make the time pass more quickly.

"Yep," Henry says. "The game is fun."

"Is it Dumbo dear?" Regina asks before Emma can protest further.

"I thought you were supposed to narrow it down," Emma mocks.

"It's Dumbo," Henry says giggling.

Regina spies Emma's confused expression. "It's always Dumbo," the brunette informs her. "It was Henry's favorite cartoon when he was little."

"It was the only one you'd let me watch," Henry says. Regina stiffens, ready for a comment about her being the evil queen, but none comes. And then a look of wonder crosses Henry's face. "Is Dumbo real?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Regina tells her very disappointed looking son.

* * *

"I don't feel well, Emma. Can you pull over?"

"Uh, sure kid. Give me a second to get over to the shoulder."

Emma turns the wheel abruptly to change lanes, and that's all it takes for Henry to puke all over the back seat of the car.

Emma stops the car, and Regina immediately gets out, pushes her seat forward, and crouches down next to Henry. "Do you feel better?" Regina asks, as she reaches into her purse and pulls out a package of wet wipes.

"Yeah. I'm sorry I couldn't wait until we stopped," he says, cheeks turning red.

"It's ok sweetheart," she says handing him the wet wipes. "I'll clean everything up. Don't worry." Regina smiles, and runs her fingers through Henry's hair.

Henry takes a wipe out and cleans off his hands, mouth, and pants, as he realizes how very bad his aim was. Regina rubs his back soothingly, and in that moment it feels like nothing has changed. Henry feels once again like the little boy whose mom always takes care of him when he's sick.

He finishes with the wet wipe, and Regina extends her hand to take it from him. "Do you want to get out and get some fresh air?" she asks.

Henry stands up, feeling another wave of nausea wash over him. He bends, vomiting on the pavement. Henry sits down on the road, and Regina sits next to him, murmuring to him soothingly and rubbing his back again.

Emma watches them together and is acutely aware of the fact that Regina is Henry's mother. She knows how to take care of him without thinking about it. It's the most natural and uninhibited Emma has ever seen Regina. She's fully present with Henry, no pretenses. She's just a mom.

"Emma," Regina calls, shaking the blonde from her thoughts. "Can you get Henry's water?"

"Of course," Emma says, wondering why she needed to be told.

She hands him the bottle. "Thanks."

"I can clean up the car while you two get some air," Emma suggests, because Henry seems to feel truly at peace with Regina for the first time in a long time. Emma doesn't want to ruin that.

Henry looks intensely embarrassed at the suggestion, and Regina jumps in. "Why don't I take care of it," she says, looking at Henry with a soft smile. "How about you take a walk with Emma. It'll make you feel better."

Henry nods, and Regina leans forward and kisses his forehead before standing and helping him to his feet.

"You ok, kid?" Emma asks.

"Yeah," Henry shrugs taking another sip of his water.

Henry is a little awkward and embarrassed, and for the first time in a while Emma begins to question how good she really is at this whole mother thing. It had been so easy to ignore the fact that Henry already had a mother when Emma's family had been busy whispering in her ear that Regina wasn't really Henry's parent, that she couldn't be since she was so evil.

But it is abundantly clear as Emma glances at Regina, who is busy cleaning up the back of the car because she is the only person Henry trusts to clean up after him when he's been sick, that Emma's child already has a mother. And Emma isn't exactly sure where that leaves her. Being good enough for a kid who has no one else is different than trying to measure up to the mother who has taken care of Henry since infancy. And Emma isn't sure she's up to that task.

* * *

They stop at the next rest area, deciding that a little time out of the car would probably be best for Henry. "I've got to pee," Henry says as soon as they park, throwing his door open, and running towards the bathroom.

Regina gets out of the car and stretches. Emma smiles as Regina's shirt rides up exposing a thin line of skin. "How are you enjoying your first road trip?" the blonde asks, walking over to the passenger's side of the car and wrapping her arms loosely around Regina's waist.

The former queen smiles, still getting used to the feeling of being touched in an affectionate way. It's new, and wonderful, and overwhelming.

Emma turns when she notices that two truckers are staring at her and Regina, "Do you want something?"

"Oh yeah," one of the men says, clearly drunk. "Your lady there is far too beautiful to be a dyke."

Emma glances at Regina, watches as the brunette stands up straighter, looking regal and powerful at the threat.

The man walks forward, approaching Regina. "We sure wouldn't mind sharing."

"Don't you dare touch her," Emma says stepping in front of Regina.

"Someone's got balls," the man declares.

"No one hurts my family. You understand me?" Emma says, stepping forward into his space.

"Come on, Johnny," the other man calls from behind him. "Those dykes aren't worth it."

Emma watches as the two turn and walk away. Once she feels comfortable that they aren't a threat, she turns to Regina. "You ok?"

"I'm fine," Regina says, "I'm just going to go use the restroom." She turns and heads for the rest area without another word.

Emma hears the sobs as soon as she opens the door. Regina is bent over the sink, and she immediately quiets when she hears another person enter the bathroom. "Regina," Emma says softly, approaching her lover. "You ok?"

"I'm fine," she says, wiping her eyes and standing up straight.

Emma gives her a sympathetic smile. "Not too much homophobia in fairy tale world, huh?"

"What?" Regina asks, actually confused for a minute. "Oh no dear, that wasn't-"

"It's ok," Emma assures. "You're allowed to be upset by assholes like those guys."

"I don't care about what insignificant men like that think," Regina says, her lip curling in disdain. Emma's expression is genuinely confused. "You called me your family."

Emma feels suddenly extremely self-conscious. Her cheeks blush deep red. "I, uh. I'm sorry."

"Oh no," Regina says quickly, taking a step forward towards Emma. "No one's ever stood up for me before."

Emma's heart throbs with feelings for the woman in front of her. The thought that Emma's actions had meant that much to Regina is heartbreaking. How useless had Regina's father been? How little love has she had in her life if this small action brings her to tears?

Emma walks forward and takes Regina's hand, swinging their arms back and forth a little. "Well, get used to it," the blonde says a little shyly.

Regina wonders if she ever can, whether it's possible to get used to this feeling that's blossoming in her chest, the feeling that she's loved and cherished. She wraps her arm around Emma's waist as they leave the bathroom.

"Mom. Ma," Henry calls from inside the small convenience store. "Can I get gummy worms?"

"How about ginger ale and saltines for now, and gummy worms for later?" Regina suggests, walking up next to Henry, her arm still firmly around Emma's waist.

"Mooomm. I feel fine now."

"I'm with your mom here, kid. I do not want neon worm parts puked up all over the back of my car."

"Ewww," Henry says, scrunching up his nose with a look of disgust.

"Get your soda and crackers," Emma tells him. "Half hour waiting period on all gummies."

"Fine," Henry agrees with a resigned pout.

Regina and Emma glance at each other when their son walks away, and the matching looks on their faces speak of fear and hope and things that are too frightening to put into words. There's so much to lose when you suddenly have so much.


	8. Chapter 8

They're well into the second hour of practically non-moving traffic on Route 95 when Regina decides that it's a good time to take a nap.

"That's not fair," Emma says as Regina reclines her seat. "I have to stay awake."

"You wanted to drive," Regina reminds the blonde.

"A good girlfriend would stay up and keep me company." _Girlfriend?_ It feels strange to say, but then Emma watches as Regina's mouth curves into a small smile and the uneasiness fades.

"It isn't my fault that you tired me out last night," Regina says, closing her eyes and looking more relaxed than Emma can remember.

"Mom!" Henry shrieks from the backseat.

Emma can't quite believe that that Regina said it either. _Where has that uptight mayor gone? _"You're going to traumatize our son," she teases. _Our son_. Emma loves the way that sounds. She loves the domesticity they're cultivating, even if she never, ever imagined herself as part of a family.

"I would imagine it's too late to prevent that. Now let me sleep."

"Yes, your majesty."

Regina opens her eyes just long enough to roll them at Emma. "Thanks princess."

* * *

"No, no."

Emma turns to see Regina talking in her sleep. The blonde waits to see whether the other woman will calm down on her own. Regina whimpers, and Emma reaches out to put a hand on the brunette's arm to calm her.

The touch seems to have the opposite effect. "Please mother, don't."

"Regina," Emma whispers, shaking her lover gently.

"Noooo," Regina cries out.

"Ma?" Henry asks, leaning forward from the backseat, clearly afraid.

"It's ok, Henry," the sheriff reassures before turning her attention back to Regina. "Regina, come on, wake up." Emma shakes her lover.

"Wha, what?" Regina sits up and looks around frantically.

"It's ok," Emma says. She's been plagued by nightmares herself for years, and she had always wished there had been someone to hold her after them, to tell her everything was ok. So she does it for Regina. "You're ok, Regina," Emma says, rubbing her hand up and down the brunette's arm.

Regina looks around frantically. She calms slightly when she sees Henry, though the sight of his face right in front of her competes with the vivid images from her dream. Images of Cora ripping Henry's heart from his chest. Ripping Emma's heart from her chest. Their bodies cold and unmoving while Regina frantically tries to awaken them.

Regina can't suppress the sob that escapes her mouth. She reaches out and touches Henry's face, needing to feel that he is warm and alive.

Henry looks absolutely terrified. "Mom, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, Henry," she says, forcing a smile onto her face and trying to hold back the tears that burn at her eyes. "I'm ok, dear."

Henry doesn't believe her. He's never seen his mom like this before. He looks to Emma for confirmation. "Your mom's fine, kid," she tells him.

Regina puts her hand on Emma's leg and doesn't let go until they reach New York.

* * *

It's an unseasonably warm evening, and so, even though they don't finish dinner until 9:30 and Henry's bedtime should be 10:30, Regina agrees that a trip to Central Park is in order.

They walk silently through the park. Henry has run ahead, climbing on the rolling rocks while Emma and Regina stroll slowly hand in hand. Emma had imagined that Regina might be overwhelmed by New York. Thirty years in a world without electricity followed by almost as many in a sleepy town in Maine hardly prepares one for New York City. But the former queen seems oddly content here, as though each passing hour away from Storybrooke serves to bring her more peace.

"What are you thinking," Emma asks. She's not normally one for intimate conversation, but her pull to know the other woman is too strong to deny.

"How easy it would be to get lost here. To just slip into a life in a city like this where no one knows my past."

"It is easy," Emma says, smiling a bit when Regina turns to look at her. "I did it for 10 months."

"Why did you leave?"

"Relationship got too serious," Emma replies truthfully. She feels Regina stiffen next to her. "I've changed since then."

Regina swallows hard. She's spent a year desperate for people to believe that she herself has changed. She owes the same faith to Emma, but god is it hard to believe that Emma would change for _her_.

"When Henry came to my apartment in Boston, he just walked inside, helped himself to juice, and wouldn't leave until I agreed to go back to Storybrooke with him."

Regina smiles; her love for her son shining in her eyes. "He's stubborn."

"Yeah, I wonder where he gets that from," Emma says with a fondness that makes Regina's heart flutter.

"I tried to hide in the bathroom," the blonde continues, "I didn't want a kid. I thought I'd spend my whole life alone. But then Henry came, and I tried not to love him, but I do, so much." She's overcome for a moment by the intensity of her love for him.

"I know," Regina whispers quietly, and she wonders why it still aches so badly.

"I just want what's best for him, Regina. I know you didn't expect his birthmother to show up after ten years, but I can't just leave now."

"And when we get back to Storybrooke?"

"When we get back to Storybrooke what?"

"When we get back, and I'm no longer Henry's mother."

"You're always going to be his mother."

"That's not what you said a few weeks ago."

Emma stops dead in her tracks. "I'm sorry, ok? I know that I've screwed a lot of things up recently. I was trying to make things work with my family. I've never had that before, you know? And I wanted them to love me. But I shouldn't have let that make me forget who I am and what I know about you."

"I understand," Regina says simply. She had given up everything she worked for in an attempt to win her mother's love. Emma squeezes Regina's hand.

They continue their walk in silence for a few minutes, before Regina speaks again. "You're Henry's mother now too," she says in a voice that betrays the effort it takes to utter the words. "He's happy with you."

"He's happy with _us_," Emma clarifies. "I'm scared shitless here, but I want this to work."

"Me too," the brunette acknowledges. "Though I would never use such crass language, of course."

"Of course," Emma agrees, glad for the break from the tension. "You raised an incredible kid, and I will never be able to thank you enough. I want to be as good of a mother to him as you are."

"Now you're just trying to get laid," Regina replies.

"_Get laid?_" Emma says with a chuckle. "I can't wait to hear the things that will come out of your mouth after years with me."

The words hang between them. The promise of years together thick and heavy with weight. Something about being loved like this makes Regina stronger, better than she's been in a long time. "If you decide you don't want me anymore," she says with almost complete certainty that this will happen. "I hope that Henry will still have both of us."

"Damn it! I'm not running," Emma says angrily. "I can't live without you Regina," she practically screams.

It hits Regina like a ton of bricks, the fact that Emma has a million reasons to be afraid. The fact that Emma has been abandoned by everyone in her life, and Regina's insecurities are doing nothing to ease her lover's fear. "You won't have to," Regina says reaching out and placing a gentle hand on Emma's neck. "I'm sorry. I'm just scared," Regina admits, "and that doesn't exactly bring out the best in me."

Emma walks forward and wraps her arms loosely around Regina's waist. Regina reciprocates, and the feeling of their bodies so close together calms them both. "Do you really think," Regina starts, but her voice cracks.

"I think I've never felt this way before. And I want to keep feeling like this."

Regina looks down at the ground. She feels close to tears, and she is just so tired of crying. No one has loved her since Daniel, and that feeling of being truly loved is something she clings to even as her memory of his touch, his voice, and his face fade with the long years.

"You know," Emma says, rocking back and forth on her heels, "you're the only person who hasn't asked me to be anyone other than me since I got to Storybrooke."

Regina looks up at Emma, who continues talking. "Snow White and Prince Charming want me to be their daughter," Emma says, still struck by the absurdity of her life. Sometimes she isn't sure whether she belongs in a mental hospital. "Five minutes of being allowed to be angry that they put me in a wardrobe, and then we were this big, happy family. A fucking wardrobe, Regina. They put me in a wardrobe that dropped me off on the side of the road in Maine."

Emma's rambling, she knows. But suddenly she's angry – so angry at what has been asked of her, what choices have been made for her. "Everyone expects me to be the goddamn savior. Henry expects me to be his mother. And I'm not any of those things. I'm just a fucked up person."

Regina understands the feeling of not meeting expectations, of not being good enough. She had never been able to satisfy her mother, had always been told by her husband that she couldn't compare to his first wife. And so Regina had become cold and cruel and domineering. She had become everything that she promised herself as a girl that she would never be.

"You're a lot more than that Emma."

Emma shrugs. "Or maybe I'm not, but I've never had someone love me anyway before. It's nice," she says lamely, because there is no way to put into words what that experience is like.

Regina finally looks up at the woman in front of her. "Well, get used to it," Regina says echoing Emma's words from earlier in the day. The desire to touch Emma is overwhelming. Regina wants to comfort and soothe and love in a way that she's only known with her son. And now with this woman who shares Henry's smile and his courage.

It takes some remembering how to be soft and loving with anyone besides Henry. Regina tightens her hold on Emma, pulling her lover's body against her own and reaching up to caress blonde waves. Regina begins to think that there might be something left of the young girl she had been, the girl capable of loving so deeply.

* * *

Emma had expected vociferous objections when she proposed going to her favorite dingy, hole in the wall restaurant in Chinatown. What she had not expected was Regina suggesting that they split four dishes between the three of them because there were so many things that she and Henry wanted to try.

"You have to try this Mom," Henry says, handing her the plate of mapo tofu.

Regina scoops some of the tofu onto her plate and wastes no time digging in. "I think this is my favorite," she declares.

"The chicken's better," Henry insists, "but it's all so good."

Emma watches Regina nod in agreement and take another bite of her dinner. "What are you staring at?" the brunette asks, raising her eyebrow. Her eyes sparkle playfully, and Emma can't quite reconcile the woman in front of her with the person she first met in Storybrooke.

Emma smiles softly, before replying: "You seem happy." The words hit Regina. _She is happy_. It's almost as if she's forgotten how to name this feeling that she has spent so long pursuing. "I like this version of you."

"As do I," Regina replies almost shyly.

* * *

"I can't believe you made me wake up this early," Emma whines.

"You're the one who insisted that the best time to come here was during sunrise." It's true, Emma had told Regina the night before that they should wait to go to the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning when they could watch the sun come up, but that doesn't mean that she's happy to be awake and out of bed at 6 a.m.

"Yeah well, last time I watched the sunrise here it was before going home and crashing for the day." Emma likes the way Regina is watching her now, like she wants to know every detail of the blonde's past. For the first time in her life, it's something that Emma wants to share. Broad brushstrokes had been all she provided when Mary Margret asked (first as a friend and then as a mother). But the way Regina looks at her – the way Regina _loves_ her – changes everything. It makes Emma feel like everything that came before made her who she is, and who she is finally feels good enough.

"Don't complain," Regina says, looking out at the water again. "I bought you coffee." Regina takes a long sip of her own latte. She could do this everyday; spend every morning with this woman. Regina has never known happiness like this to last, and as much as she knows she should run before she gets hurt, she can't. Emma's arm is around her waist, and Henry is beside her. And she isn't strong enough to pull away.

The three of them watch as the sun rises over Brooklyn's skyline, lighting up the sky in a blaze of reds and oranges. The moment is worth every bit of sleep depravation.

When the sky is bright and the last hints of color have faded, Regina looks down at her son. He smiles at her with an expression that she recognizes from Emma's face, and for the first time Regina loves that Henry shares the blonde's features. Regina wraps an arm around Henry, pulling him against her side.

"That was so cool," he remarks of the sunrise. The only reaction Regina can manage is to nod her head in agreement, because her son is wrapping his arms around her and hugging tightly.

She bends down and kisses his hair. "I love you, Mom." He's been saying it again these past few days, as if making up for the months of insisting that he hated her.

"I love you too, sweetheart."

Henry stays in the moment, just letting Regina hold him, for a while before asking, "What are we going to do now?"

Regina wipes the tears from her cheeks, while Emma tells Henry, "I was thinking we could check out Brooklyn today."

"Cool," Henry agrees.

"Prospect Park is really nice," Emma tells Regina; having learned on this trip how much the brunette loves green, open spaces.

"That sounds perfect," Regina says, touched that Emma has given so much thought to what Regina enjoys.

"Come on," Henry says, grabbing both his mothers' hands and pulling them towards Brooklyn.


	9. Chapter 9

_Thank you for all the reviews, favorites, and follows. This chapter took a turn for the more serious, and there is a discussion of attempted suicide. Please don't read if that upsets or triggers you. On another note, I'm slightly concerned that my version of Regina is displaying greater emotional maturity than canon-Regina. I like to believe that she's capable of this kind of strength, but perhaps I'm too much of an optimist. I hope you enjoy the chapter, and as always, I would very much appreciate your feedback._

* * *

Regina wakes and thinks, like she has each morning since leaving Storybrooke, that she will keep her eyes closed just a few minutes longer. Just a few minutes more for the illusion. And then the realization – that there is a warm body lying on her chest – puffs of air blowing on her breast – blonde hair tickling at her skin. That this is real. Regina opens her eyes.

Emma moans softly in her sleep and curls further into Regina's body. The savior – so strong when she's awake – is vulnerable in her sleep. She's vulnerable and lying on Regina's chest, trusting Regina not to hurt her, not to kill her to get vengeance on Snow White. It's a trust that Regina is not used to.

She remembers this feeling from when Henry was first placed in her arms: the incredible realization that she was responsible for another human being. And while Emma is not a baby who is depending on Regina for her every need, Emma – much like Regina herself – is trusting that she won't be hurt despite the fact that she has no experience in her life that would suggest such a thing were possible.

Regina promises herself that she won't hurt Emma. The former queen isn't sure how she will accomplish this, because she has hurt everyone she has ever loved. But she is going to try. She tightens her grip on the woman in her arms.

"Mmmm," Emma murmurs, nuzzling her face further into Regina's chest. Half-asleep Emma seeks the warmth and comfort that fully-awake Emma still shies away from. "I can feel you staring at me."

"I'm sorry, my dear," Regina says with an affectionate smile. She runs her hands through Emma's hair.

"S'okay," Emma says, finally opening her eyes and looking at Regina. The look in the brunette's eyes is one that Emma has never seen directed at her. Such love that it's frightening.

Emma rests her chin on Regina's chest. "How d'you sleep?" she asks, shaking the remnants of sleep from her mind.

"Fine and you?"

Emma wonders if it's a lie, but she lets it slide. "I slept great. This bed is ridiculously comfortable. Can we stay here forever?"

And then they're both wide-awake. Because this delicate, fragile, blooming relationship is beautiful and perfect when they're alone in bed. But back in Storybrooke, how can it end in anything but pain?

"Henry's spring break is going to be over in a few days," Regina reminds Emma.

"I'm sure Henry wouldn't mind if we extended our vacation for a while longer."

"While that's likely true, it is also precisely why children are not allowed to decide whether they want go to school."

Emma hates the way that Regina's spine has stiffened, how her hands are disentangling themselves from Emma's hair. Emma feels sick, feels overwhelmed by the thought that Regina is going to leave her.

Emma's phone picks the exact wrong minute to spring to life. "Damn it," Emma swears as her phone vibrates along the bedside table. She doesn't even look at it. There are 10 messages she still hasn't listen to from David. There are about to be 11.

"Please, Regina," Emma says, hating the way desperation and need tinge her voice. "Let's just take a few more days. I'm not ready to go back there."

"Why not?"

"I don't like who I've become since the curse broke," Emma says with a sigh, "The woman who told you that you aren't Henry's mother, that wasn't me. I just need some time to remember who Emma Swan is." She's always prided herself on knowing who she was. Without family or friends, she had built an identity on her own. She had been proud of the woman she was. But now it's like that woman is fading away; like Emma is grasping on to the shreds of that identity as everyone demands for her to be the perfect savior they've all imagined.

"You can't run away forever."

Emma looks back at Regina as dark eyes soften once again. There's a compassion and understanding there that no one has ever had for Emma before.

"How about for another week?" A skeptical look meets her. "Come on, Henry can miss a few days of school. He's a smart kid. He'll get straight A's either way."

"Of course he will," Regina says proudly, and then, because she too wants this so very badly, "one more week."

Regina intertwines her fingers with Emma's before bringing the blonde's hand up to her mouth and pressing soft kisses to each knuckle. And then Regina is straddling Emma; dark eyes gleaming with want and need. Emma closes her eyes and just feels.

* * *

Post-coital, sleepy, smiley Emma is impossible to say no to. Which is how Regina and Henry end up at a playground in Central Park while Emma takes a mid-morning nap before they set off for D.C.

Henry runs for the swings with the same enthusiasm he had as a little boy. The little boy that Regina still remembers being unable to swing on his own. Excited squeals of _Mommy, higher, higher _still echo in her mind.

Regina sits down on the swing next to Henry. He's happy. He's next to her and he's happy. She squeezes her eyes closed, trying to memorize everything about this feeling. Her son is happy with her.

"Mom?"

Her eyes open and the smile that graces Regina's face is more tired and sad than Henry remembers.

"What happens when we go home?"

She wants to tell him that he'll come home with her. That he'll sleep in his bed. That he'll be hers again. But she's trying to keep her promise. "What do you want to happen?"

Henry shrugs, kicks at the dirt below him. "I missed you," he whispers.

"Oh Henry," Regina says, biting back the tears of joy that flood her eyes. "I've missed you too."

Henry looks at Regina, tears in her eyes, just like there had been every time he had handed her a homemade birthday card, every time he had taken a bow at a school play, every time he had hugged her and told her that she was the best mommy ever.

"You're not the Evil Queen anymore, are you?"

If only things were that simple."I'm trying to be the mother you want me to be." All her life Regina has tried to twist herself into who other people want her to be. She's tried to be good enough for everyone else. Tried to turn herself inside out until someone would finally love her. And no one had.

Until Emma. Emma, who loves her truly and without condition. That knowledge gives Regina strength.

"There is a lot that you don't understand about the past," Regina says, remembering now that what Henry needs is a mother, not a lost girl trying desperately to be good enough to be loved. Maybe he's lost that mother in the midst of demands that she change for him and her begging for forgiveness. "But what you need to know is that I'm your mother, and I love you more than anything in this world or any other."

Henry smiles. Because it's safety and security. And he lets himself trust her again. Trust her to take care of him. Trust her to make it all right. He lets his mother be his mother, and it feels good.

Regina reaches out and takes Henry's hand. "Everything is going to be ok, Henry. I promise." And then she knows it will be, because she _will_ make it ok for her child.

Henry smiles – a real, genuine smile – and Regina thinks that maybe it already is ok.

* * *

They're at a rest stop in Maryland when Emma finally relents and checks her voicemail. Fourteen messages. She sighs, steps out of the car, stretches, readies herself for the guilt trip David is certainly about to lay on her, and puts the phone up to her ear. But then she hears his greeting: an "Emma" that sounds raspy and tear filled and lost – like everything he's ever known has been taken from him. Her stomach sinks, and as if a few days with Regina is enough to change Emma's instincts, she reaches out for the brunette, stopping Regina's motion away from the car and pulling her back towards Emma.

"Emma," David's voice repeats. "You need to come back to Storybrooke." She can hear him crying. Emma can't remember ever seeing him cry. Aren't children not supposed to hear their fathers cry? "Mary Margaret – your mother," he corrects, and the words still sound strange to Emma. "She tried to kill herself. She needs you Emma."

The phone slips from her grasp. Emma can hear David's voice distantly from the speaker. A stream of noise blurring and hissing still emanating from the phone on the ground.

And then the instincts kick in. The ones that say run. Run before anything can hurt you. Run before anyone can take advantage of the hurt that's there. Run, run, run.

Regina debates whether to follow Emma. She isn't sure how what she will do to provide comfort even if she does follow her lover. But then Regina thinks of all the times that she had needed someone. Days when she felt desperately alone, and god, it wouldn't have mattered what they said, she just needed _someone_.

Regina finds Emma in the wooded area behind the rest stop. The blonde is beating her hands against the trunk of a large oak tree. Hitting the tree again and again and again until Regina can see red trails staining the bark. "Emma," she whispers, reaching out and grabbing one of those delicate, bloodied hands.

Emma looks at Regina, her eyes wild and desperate, like a caged animal. Regina releases Emma's hand in case her touch is making Emma feel trapped.

Emma stares at Regina – at a face that is far too calm and compassionate. Emma feels anything but calm. She feels like everything inside her is about to explode. "Damn it!" She screams, hurling her fist into the tree again and crying out in pain as her already injured hand collides with the hard surface.

Regina lunges forward, grabbing Emma by the shoulders. And then, the last thing that Regina was expecting happens...Emma melts. Her eyes are filled with tears and terror, and she slumps down, dragging Regina with her onto the grass, still damp from an early afternoon shower.

Emma hides her face in her hands as she begins to sob. Regina moves forward, until she is impossibly close and they are breathing the same air. The former queen has only taken care of two people in her life: Henry and Snow. Thoughts of the latter fill her with nothing but pain, and so Regina thinks of Henry. She thinks of how she had dried his tears, how she had soothed him when he cried. Regina wraps one arm around Emma's shoulders and pulls the sheriff against her chest.

"She wanted to leave me," Emma mutters into the bloody hands that still cover her face. She feels so pathetic and weak. "She didn't care that I wouldn't have a mother again."

It breaks Regina's heart. Those words, they make Regina's chest physically ache, and god, she would do anything to take Emma's pain away. "It wasn't about you," Regina promises. "She loves you."

Emma looks up then. Because she knows that Regina hates Snow with such passion that it has driven Regina to unspeakable acts. Emma knows that Regina wants Snow dead, that the former queen should be taking pleasure in how far her enemy has fallen. But she isn't. She's comforting Emma instead. However much Regina wants to see Snow hurt, she wants to keep Emma from pain even more.

It's an overwhelming realization, and Emma doesn't know what to do with it besides fling herself at Regina, pressing their mouths together in a frantic kiss. When they pull apart for air, Regina settles her hands on Emma's cheeks, softly cradling the blonde's face and wiping away the tear tracks.

"I love you, Emma," Regina promises, though in this moment, for once in her life Emma doesn't need the reassurance. She knows with certainly that she is loved.

"I love you too," Emma replies. She wipes her runny nose with her hand before realizing that she's smeared blood all over herself. "God, I'm a mess," she says before wiping at her face with her sleeve.

"Are you ready to go get cleaned up?" Regina asks, because she can sit there all day while Emma rages and cries if she needs to.

"Yeah," Emma says standing. Now that the moment has passed, the intimacy is shocking. "Thanks," she whispers, embarrassed, looking down at the ground.

"It's nothing, dear." Emma doesn't protest, because they both know damn well that it's something. It's everything really.


	10. Chapter 10

_I'm sorry that it took me so long to update; real life got busy. Warning for mentions of rape and suicide. I hope you enjoy the chapter, and I will try my best to update faster next time._

* * *

"There you go," Regina soothes, blonde hair in one hand, as Emma splashes cold water on her face. Regina brings her other hand up to Emma's back and begins rubbing soft circles.

Emma's breathing is shaky and her arms feel like lead as she stands and scrubs her hands over aching eyes. Regina hands her a paper towel. "Thanks," Emma mutters while she dries her face.

"Are you ready to start our drive?" Regina asks, as Emma tosses the towels in the trashcan and squares her shoulders.

Emma thinks that she might never be ready to face this. "It's already 4 o'clock. We won't get too far before we need to sleep."

Regina knows that Emma is tempted to run, but she's also starting to understand Emma well enough to know that she will regret it if she does. "We can nap in the car. Why don't I take the first driving shift," Regina suggests, noticing that Emma's hands are still trembling.

Emma reluctantly reaches into her pocket and removes her car keys. She drops the key ring into Regina's hand, letting her fingers rest against Regina's palm, relishing in the warmth. It feels too hard to ask for what she needs – for Regina's arms to be around her again – to feel safe and taken care of. "Ok, let's go," Emma says, striding out of the bathroom.

"What do you want to tell Henry?" Regina asks, as they walk towards the car.

Emma freezes, partially because she has no idea what to say to him and partially because Regina just asked her a parenting question. Like they're doing this together. Like they should check these things over with one another.

"I promised that I wouldn't lie to him," Emma says, though she doesn't like the idea of telling the truth here either. She doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to explain

"Ok," Regina says, taking Emma's hand in her own with a gentle squeeze.

Regina begins to lead Emma to the car, hands firmly joined. Emma remains rooted to the spot. "Can you explain it to him?"

"Of course."

When Emma and Regina reach the parking lot, Henry is leaning against the car looking impatient. "What's going on?" he demands, ready for his mothers to hide the truth from him again.

Regina smiles softly. "Let's sit down and talk."

Henry's bravado disappears in an instant, and he sounds like a little boy. "Yeah, sure."

Regina puts her hand on Henry's back and guides him and Emma to a nearby bench. Regina sits down next to her son, and Emma plants herself on Regina's other side, still holding onto the brunette's hand. Henry waits for Regina to talk, to explain things to him. He has the same trusting expression on his face now that she'd seen when he was small and still believed that his mother could do no wrong.

"We have to go back to Storybrooke," Regina begins.

"Why?"

"Something's happened to Mary Margaret. She's ok," Regina quickly reassures. "But we're going to go home so that Emma can be with her."

"What happened to her?"

She takes a deep breath and then just says it: "She tried to kill herself."

"She wouldn't do that!"

"Sometimes when people are very sad they don't realize that there are other ways to make the pain stop."

"Is she going to try to do it again?"

"I don't know Henry. But I'm certain that David is making sure that Mary Margaret is getting the help she needs right now."

"And we're going to help her too, right?"

"There's not always something that you can do to help, Henry. But we will do everything we can."

"Really?" Henry asks, as if realizing exactly whom they're talking about.

"I don't want to see you or Emma lose someone that you love."

Henry hugs Regina. "Thanks Mom."

Regina returns the hug; still grateful for each time her son embraces her. As they pull apart she asks, "Do you want to ask us anything else, sweetheart?" Henry shakes his head. "Ok, then how about we set off on our journey?"

* * *

Emma is taking a midnight driving shift while Regina naps. The sheriff watches the road ahead of her as they speed back towards Storybrooke. This is new: racing towards her problems instead of away. She tries not to think of what awaits her back in Storybrooke. The guilt. The obligations. The feeling of once again being disposable; not worth staying for. Emma is pulled from her thoughts by Regina crying out in her sleep. In the last few days, Emma has learned that her lover suffers with painful nightmares.

Emma reaches over to shake Regina gently, causing the brunette to wake from her dream with a start. Regina is looking around frantically for whoever is about to attack her. "Just me," Emma says as she watches Regina slowly relax. She wonders how many times Regina has been woken up by a brutal hand, by a body pressing down on her.

Regina wishes that there were somewhere to go to collect herself because she feels dangerously close to crying. She can still feel everything from her dream as if it were real, as if it were happening to her right now. Her mother's hands holding her shoulders down, pinning her to the bed while her husband satisfies himself, like her body is his to do with as he pleases.

Emma looks over at Regina. The brunette is staring out the window, her eyes watery, her hands clawing at her thighs. "If you want to tell me, you can," Emma offers.

The kindness is enough to shake a few tears free. Regina turns back to Emma with a smile of thanks, but remains quiet.

"I've had nightmares for years," Emma says. "Shit that happens to you as a kid, it never really leaves you, does it?"

Emma's eyes contain so much compassion, and Regina doesn't know what to do with that. She certainly doesn't deserve it.

"We are not the same, Emma."

"I don't know," Emma says with a light shrug. "I kind of think we are."

"Because you were a bad girl for a few years?" Regina asks mockingly. "You stole cars. Spent a couple months in jail."

"No. Because, we've been hurt and abandoned, and we're still here." Emma has always believed that she was a survivor. It didn't mean she ever thought she would was happy. But she's always known that she had the strength to survive. "I've pushed people away my whole life, and I'm pretty sure you have too. Maybe we do it differently. I'm sure better than you are at running. And maybe you're better at lashing out. But the end result is the same, isn't it?"

"And what is that?" Regina asks, her voice still cold.

"We've always been alone. I've wanted a family my whole life. Wanted people to love me."

With that Regina really can't hold back the tears. All she has ever wanted was to be loved.

"I think that you and I both learned to protect ourselves because people have always hurt us," Emma continues. Regina was unaware that the blonde was capable of this kind of insight into either of them, but she sure is giving Archie a run for his money.

"There were things that I never wanted to be that I became," Regina says in a whisper. Her voice drips with self-loathing.

Emma reaches out and takes her lover's hand. "I know."

"I'm not a good person, Emma. The things that I've done…" She drifts off, unable to give voice to the horrors she's committed, certain that to do so would mean that Emma would hate her.

"You're driving 12 hours with me in the middle of the night so that I can be with Mary Margaret."

"I hardly think that a road trip makes up for the fact that I'm the reason you grew up in foster care."

"Yes, you've done terrible things Regina." The brunette tries to pull her hand away, but Emma hangs on tight. "Is that what you want to hear?"

"It's the truth."

"Maybe, but you are the reason that I am going back to Storybrooke instead of running as fast as possible in the other direction. And I know that the last thing you want is to deal with the woman who murdered your mother, but you are doing that for me." Emma's crying too as she says the words, because in 29 years no one has ever sacrificed anything for her. "And you know what else Regina? I think Henry is a pretty damn good kid. And that sure as hell isn't because of anything I did."

"I love him," Regina says, still feeling like she needs to prove it to everyone around her.

"I know," Emma says with a certainty that brings a smile to Regina's face.

The smile grows and dark eyes twinkle as Regina teases, "And for some reason, I seem to love you too."

"I have a superpower, you know?" Emma says. _God, they're a mess_, she thinks as she looks at Regina's tear stained face, knowing her own face matches.

"Yes, I believe you told me that once."

"I can tell things about people. Not just whether they're lying. Do you know what I know about you?" she asks, and Regina holds her breath. "I know that you have good inside you."

Regina turns away again, and Emma pulls her hand from the brunette's grasp to place a palm on her cheek. "I know that you deserve to be loved. And that's good, because I can't seem to stop myself from loving you."

"It would probably be best if you did."

The self-loathing is back, and it is really pissing Emma off. "Bullshit." Regina turns back to Emma. "I'm happy with you, and you're happy with me. So we are going to pretend that we are not the two most fucked up people in the world, and we are going to enjoy the fact that we make each other happy. You got that?"

Misery and pain Regina understands. But this – love and the prospect of happiness – she doesn't know what to do with. "I can try my dear. I can't promise that I'll give you what you deserve."

"Just stay, and we'll be ok."

* * *

"Are you ok?" Regina asks, pushing Henry's hair back from his forehead and gazing down at him. The first light of dawn is peeking in through the curtains in Henry's bedroom.

"Yup."

"I know this has all been a lot to deal with."

"I'm fine."

He sounds like a boy who has had to grow up too fast. This isn't the child she knew before the curse broke. "You never have to pretend to be ok with me. If you're upset you can tell me, baby." Then she adds, wishing that she never had given him reason to doubt, "I won't hurt you."

Henry scrutinizes his mother, wondering whether this can be real. Whether the evil queen can be good, can be his mommy.

"I love you Henry," Regina says, leaning down and kissing his forehead. "If you need Emma or me, just knock."

"Ok. Goodnight, Mom."

"Goodnight, sleep tight," Regina begins, as she stands and tucks the blanket around her son. Henry's voice joins hers: "Don't let the bedbugs bite."

Regina turns out the light and closes the door to her son's room. He's home.

* * *

Regina waits a half hour for Emma to come out of the bathroom before the concern overwhelms her.

"Emma?" Regina calls, cracking the door to the bathroom. A wall of thick steam engulfs Regina. She closes the door behind her, and now she can make out the sound of rapid breathing. "Emma dear, are you ok?"

There's no answer, just what sounds like Emma hyperventilating. "Can I join you?" Regina asks. Still no answer, so Regina strips off her clothes and warns, "I'm coming in, ok?"

Regina pulls back the shower curtain to reveal Emma crumpled on the floor of the tub. Regina kneels in front of Emma and puts her hand on the blonde's arms. "Emma. Can you look at me?"

Emma looks up. "Good," Regina says, moving one hand to the side of Emma's face and keeping their eyes locked. "Can you take a deep breath for me now?"

Emma lets out a shuddering breath. "Good, that's good," Regina says, moving closer and placing one hand on Emma's back. "Keep breathing," she instructs as she rubs Emma's back. "In and out. Good. In and out."

It takes a few minutes for Emma's breathing to steady, for the feeling of terror to recede. "I'm sorry," Emma whispers, suddenly incredibly embarrassed that Regina found her mid-panic attack in the bathtub.

"There's nothing to be sorry for, dear." Regina can still feel Emma's body trembling. Regina runs her hands up and down Emma's arms. "You're alright," Regina whispers as Emma lets her chin fall to her chest in exhaustion.

Regina maneuvers them so that she is behind Emma before switching the water from shower to tub. Regina wraps her arms around Emma, pulling the blonde firmly against her as the water rises around them. "You're ok, Emma."

"That's never happened to me before," Emma whispers into Regina's neck, too spent to lift her head.

"I'd say that what you're dealing with is enough to cause anyone to have a panic attack."

"You knew just what to do," Emma comments.

"Yes, well your mother used to have panic attacks as a child."

Emma sits up slightly, turning to look at Regina. "And you took care of her." It's not a question, just something that Emma had not fully considered until today. Regina nods.

"You must be tired," Emma comments, as she rests her head against Regina again. It's almost morning and they still haven't slept.

"Don't worry about me, dear."

"But I do."

"I know."

* * *

Regina wakes to the sound of her doorbell. She's exhausted and certain that she can't have gotten more than an hour or two of sleep. Emma is curled in Regina's arms and the brunette has no intention of moving and disturbing her lover until the doorbell continues ringing. Regina gets out of bed carefully, pleased when she succeeds at not waking Emma.

It is with surprise that Regina opens the door to reveal Mary Margaret. "Hello," Regina says, her voice tightly controlled. "Emma's asleep." Regina makes no offer to wake her lover, suspecting that Emma will need some time to prepare for seeing her mother.

"I came to see you."

"Why?"

"Kill me," Snow says, her arms outstretched.

"What?" Regina asks, her lip curling in disgust. _How dare Snow ask this of her. _ Just when Regina had finally begun to think that she could move on, that she could be more than _this_.

"We have been fighting for so long. It's cost us so much. It has to end before anyone else dies. Before Emma –"

"No," Regina practically snarls.

"Take my life, but spare my daughter." It's infuriating, the self-righteous attempt to make Regina the villain in this. To insinuate that Regina would hurt Emma. _No_. If Snow wants to end her life she will have to do it with her own hands.

"Go home Snow." The girl's real name leaves Regina lips for the first time in 29 years.

"Why?" Snow asks, because she was so convinced that Regina was incapable of mercy.

"Go home, and we will pretend that this never happened."

"Why would you do that for me?"

"I'm not," Regina tells the woman standing before her sobbing. "Go clean yourself up before your daughter comes to see you."

"Regina-"

"No." Regina lifts a hand to silence Snow. "That's more than enough. Now get off my porch."

* * *

Snow stares out the window. _Why are they speaking like she can't hear them? _

"She needs you, Emma," David says.

"I doubt I can do anything if she won't even talk to you."

"She needs you to tell her that you know she did the right thing killing Cora."

"And if I think she didn't?" Emma asks. "Mary Margaret did what she thought she had to do, and now she is going to have to live with it." The words echo in Emma's head as she realizes that her mother has found another option: not living at all. "Fine. I'll talk to her."

"Thank you," David says, as he returns to preparing the elaborate meal that they both know Snow will refuse to eat.

Emma sits down on the corner of the bed where Snow is curled up with blankets wrapped around her.

"Mary Margaret," Emma whispers, and Snow wonders if it's easier for Emma this way. Easier to see her as Mary Margaret, the friend she had met when she first came to Storybrooke. Not Snow White. Not her mother.

"Yes, Emma."

"Why did you do it?" The words sound harsh to Emma as they leave her mouth. Neither tact nor words have ever been her strong suit, and she doesn't know how to talk around something as big as this.

"I wasn't thinking," Snow says brushing off the question. "Tell me about your trip."

"You won't want to hear about it," Emma says, and Snow knows that what Emma means is that Snow won't want to hear how her daughter is falling in love with Regina. But Snow does. Snow wants to know exactly that. Because for the first time in years this morning, Snow had begun to believe that there might be good left inside Regina.

"Tell me about the places you visited," Snow says, focusing her eyes on Emma for the first time.

"We went to Acadia and then to New York. I've been there before, but it was fun to show them to Henry."

"And Regina," Snow adds.

"Look, I really don't want to talk about that with you."

"Do you love her?" Emma says nothing, but Snow knows what love looks like, and she can see it clearly in her daughter's eyes.

"And she loves you," Snow says hopefully. Because if Regina really can love, if she can be good enough to love Emma, then maybe there can be good left in Snow too.

"She does."


	11. Chapter 11

Emma returns to Regina's house absolutely exhausted. She had barely scratched the surface of anything in talking to Snow, but still, visiting her parents had drained all the energy that Emma had been able to muster up for the day.

"Regina," Emma calls as she walks into the house.

"She's at the office," Henry tells Emma, which is completely confusing because she was pretty sure that Regina was no longer mayor. "Something about Gramps forgetting to make a budget for 2013," Henry informs Emma, foreseeing the onslaught of questions. Really, this only brings more questions to mind, like where the hell does Storybrooke get its funds from anyway.

Emma finds Henry in the den surrounded by the stacks of photo albums that Regina had left on the couch in the haste to leave town a week ago. "You look like you're thinking hard," Emma comments. Henry barely looks up from scrutinizing the pictures.

"Why were these laying here?" Henry asks.

Emma sits down next to him on the couch, and her heart nearly stops. The book in Henry's lap is open to a picture of him and Regina labeled _Henry's first day of kindergarten_. He has chubby cheeks and a batman backpack on, and Emma feels a lump form in her throat. Her son is perfect, and she wishes she could have seen each and every one of the moments that she missed.

"My mom looks happy in all these pictures."

Emma studies Regina's face in the photo for the first time. She's beaming. "Of course she does. I bet your mom was so proud of you that day."

"She wrote letters to me in the front of every album," Henry explains, flipping to the front of the book.

_My dear Henry, _

_I can hardly believe that you're five years old. It feels like yesterday that I first held you in my arms. You have grown into a kind, intelligent, wonderful little boy, and I am so very grateful to be your mommy. _

_I love you my darling, _

_Mom_

Emma runs her hands over Regina's script, wishing that her lover were here so she could thank her for raising their son.

"Do you think she meant it?"

"Of course she meant it. Kid, your mom loves you so much."

Henry flips to another picture and begins to study Regina's face again.

"When you came to find me in Boston, you told me that your mom was only pretending to love you. Why did you think that?"

"Mary Margaret gave me the book, and I realized that Mom was the Evil Queen."

"Was that the only reason?" Emma asks, because she's looking down at a picture of a mother whose love for her son is so apparent.

"Yeah," Henry says with a shrug. "I guess I started being kind of mean to her once I figured it out, and she got really strict then."

"Henry," Emma sighs, looking up from the album and at her son. "Your mom was just terrified of losing you. She may not be perfect, but if there is anything I'm sure of, it is how much your mom loves you."

Henry seems to consider that for a moment as he keeps his eyes trained on the old pictures. Eventually he puts the album down next to him. "Are you going to live here now?"

Emma is unprepared for the question and takes a moment trying to get out a response. Her relationship with Regina is about a week old now, and any rational person knows that is far from an appropriate time to consider moving in together. And yet, Emma wants nothing more than to stay here with her new family.

"You don't want to stay?"

"Oh no, kid, it isn't that. I just…your mom and I haven't talked about it yet."

"Of course Mom wants you to live here."

"Did she say something to you?" Emma asks, her voice ridiculously hopeful.

"No, but it's obvious. You're her true love."

"Henry," Emma sighs, and suddenly the weight of the day is crashing down on her once again.

Henry senses that the conversation isn't going to get him anywhere. "I'm going to have some ice cream. You want any?"

"Rocky road?" Emma asks.

"Of course," Henry says getting off the couch. "If you lived here we could have rocky road ice cream together all the time."

Emma rolls her eyes. The kid is relentless.

But hours later the thought of her, Henry, and Regina sitting on the sofa together and eating ice cream will still linger in Emma's mind.

* * *

"I didn't think that you would be back so soon," Regina says when she gets home to find Emma in the backyard enjoying an apple. The blonde just shrugs, and Regina chooses not to press the issue. "You're eating an apple."

"You're observant," Emma teases.

"From my tree?" Regina asks as the walks over to Emma.

"You were right when you said they were the best apples I would ever taste."

"How do you know they aren't poison?" Regina asks lightly.

"I trust you," Emma says walking forward and putting her hands on Regina's hips.

Regina smiles uncomfortably and averts her eyes under Emma's knowing gaze. Regina isn't used to someone understanding her. It's been years since she has let anyone know her well enough to see past her defenses.

"How is your mother?" Regina asks. It hurts that Snow's life matters to her; it hurts that making sure that Snow White survives seems like the most important thing that Regina can imagine.

Emma shrugs. "Can we not talk about that now?" she asks, because god does she need a break. A break from her family, from responsibility, from the fact that now that she's let herself become attached to people, that she's weak and vulnerable and that they can hurt her so badly.

Regina nods. She doesn't push, and Emma is grateful for that. "What do you want to do today?"

"What's your favorite place in Storybrooke?"

Emma is smiling at Regina softly, beautifully. It makes Regina want to be someone who she hasn't been for so many years, someone who was able to love without reservation or fear, someone who knew how to feel and how to live. She leads Emma to her car.

They emerge a while later at the end of a fire road that leads into the woods. "We will have to walk from here."

Regina takes Emma's hand in hers as they walk into the forest. Regina has loved these woods since she first arrived in Storybrooke. It might not have been as majestic as the enchanted forest, but the woods here reminded her of the places she had escaped to as a little girl.

"Where are we going?" Emma asks a few minutes later as the trees become denser and denser.

"Patience dear."

And then, Emma sees it: a clearing surrounding a babbling brook. The sounds of flowing water and the scent of wet earth fill the air.

Regina walks forward to sit on a rock besides the stream. She removes her boots and socks and pushes her leggings up to her knees. Emma stands, transfixed, staring at Regina who is smiles peacefully as the water runs over her toes.

"Are you going to join me?"

Emma sets her shoes next to Regina's and dangles her feet in the water. "How did you find this place?"

Regina smiles wryly. "I've spent 30 years in this town."

Emma watches the melancholy settle over Regina's face at the memory of those lonely years. "It's beautiful here," Emma tells her lover.

"Yes, it is." Regina wraps an arm around Emma, and the blonde moves closer. Regina breathes deeply, reminds herself that this is real.

"After Daniel came back, and I had to," Regina's voice breaks, and Emma puts her arm around Regina. "I had to kill him." Regina swallows heavily, and Emma kisses her cheek, pressing her nose against the side of Regina's face. "I put a headstone up for him here."

"Can I see it?" Emma asks. She doesn't want to push her luck. Regina is already sharing so much.

Regina nods, smiles, and wipes a stray tear from her cheek before standing up. She leads Emma by the hand, their bare feet crunching the leaves beneath them, until they come to the shady spot when she had placed a simple stone with Daniel's name.

Emma hates sappiness. And she is pretty sure that she doesn't believe that anything remains besides a body when someone dies. But she squeezes Regina's hand and then crouches down in front of the stone.

She runs her fingers over the engraving. "I want you to know that I'm going to take care of Regina. I love her, and I'm going to do my best to make her happy. So, wherever you are, I want you to know that you don't need to worry about her. She changed my whole life, you know? I'm sure you do. I'm sorry for what happened to you. Anyway, I just thought you would want to know that Regina is loved." Emma smiles awkwardly at the stone, wondering what Daniel would think about all this if he really could know.

Emma stands up to see Regina smiling at her. The brunette's eyes are misty as she pulls Emma to her for a kiss. "Thank you," Regina whispers. Emma offers a little smile, glad that she did the right thing. "Before I killed him, there was a moment when he was lucid. He told me to love again." Regina reaches out and takes both of Emma's hands in her own. Regina thinks that she's learning how to love again. She had told Henry that she didn't know how to love very well. But she is learning.

Regina pulls Emma against her in a tight hug. "I love you, Emma." She hopes that Emma knows and that knowing helps Emma get through what's happening with Snow.

Emma returns the embrace and lays her head on Regina's shoulder. "I love you too."

* * *

Regina finds Snow on her doorstep once again that afternoon.

"Emma is at the station. Something I would have thought you would know, since she's there with your husband."

"I came to see you."

"I believe that we already established that I have no intention of removing your heart."

"Regina, hear me out please. I am so, so sorry that I killed your mother."

"You didn't kill her. You manipulated me into killing her," Regina tells Snow. But then she reminds herself that her goal is not to taunt Snow and make her feel even worse. Her goal is to make sure that Snow survives and that she takes care of her daughter. Emma may be a grown woman, but Regina knows that she needs her mother. And Regina will do everything in her power to keep Emma from losing that again.

Regina is a good actress. She had hidden her true self for years. So now she will make herself speak these words, even if she doesn't believe them.

"I forgive you, Snow."

Snow's eyes are wide with wonder, wide like the eyes that Regina remembers from this little girl she explained true love to, the little girl who she taught what love meant.

"Why?"

"Because we need to move on. There is no use remaining stuck in the past."

Snow scrutinizes Regina. _No use remaining stuck in the past?_ This from the woman who held a grudge for decades. "I don't believe you."

"Honestly, Snow. I'm telling you that I forgive you; what more do you want to hear?"

"The truth. Please Regina. Just tell me why you're really doing this."

Snow's eyes are piercing. Wide and green, and now when Regina looks at those eyes, she sees Emma and Henry's eyes.

"Would you care for a drink?'

Confusion settles over Snow. She stands there frowning for a minute before following Regina into the house.

"Cider?" Regina offers. Snow just raises an eyebrow. "I suppose you wouldn't be interested in that. What about some tea then?"

"Please Regina. I don't want anything to drink. I just want to tell you how sorry I am."

"Does that make you feel better, Snow?" It bothers Regina that Snow is at her house looking for absolution, looking to feel like she deserves to keep living.

Snow shakes her head sadly. "I wish it did."

Silence settles for a moment, until Snow asks again, "Why would you lie and tell me that you forgave me?"

"Whether I like it or not, we are family."

"We've been family for a long time," Snow says. "That never stopped you from trying to kill me before."

Snow watches as Regina's jaw clenches and the vein in her forehead bulges. "Your father was never my family," she spits through gritted teeth.

Snow takes this in. "Emma?"

Regina's heart pounds. It feels so wrong, so dangerous to talk to Snow about the people she loves. "Emma and Henry deserve to be happy. And if that means that they need you, then I will learn to live with that."

Snow stares at Regina in wonder. "I'm so sorry," Snow says with a sob. Suddenly she is so very sorry. Not just that she had darkened her own heart, but that she had taken another person from Regina. "Please, please forgive me. I'm so sorry."

Regina wants to be unmoved, but even as she tried to kill Snow, she had craved the woman's forgiveness and love all the same. Regina's mind flashes to a day in the woods when they had both worn rags and spoke as strangers. "You told me once that you didn't believe it is ever too late for someone to change. Though I may have more to atone for, perhaps it is advice that we should both take to heart."

* * *

"Can I help?" Henry asks, when he finds his mom in the kitchen alone cooking dinner.

"Of course, sweetheart." He used to love to cook with her, but it's been so very long since he's sought out her company.

"What can I do?" Henry asks eagerly.

"Would you like to peel some garlic?"

"Sure," Henry affirms, taking the head of garlic from his mom's hand.

He peels the cloves in silence for a few minutes before calling for Regina. "Mom?"

It still makes her chest tighten with emotion to hear him call her _Mom _with such love again. "Yes?"

Henry looks at Regina sheepishly. "I overheard you talking to Mary Margaret." When she doesn't look angry that he was eavesdropping, he continues. "You're trying to save her."

"Henry," she says, bending down to meet his eyes. "I love you." She lifts his chin with her fingers, holding him in place, and the look on his face is so hopeful, so genuine. "I would do anything to make you and Emma happy. And if Mary Margaret makes you happy, then I will help her. I would do anything for you, Henry."

Henry struggles for a minute, tears filling his eyes. He wants to believe that she's telling the truth, that the family that he thought had shattered when he found out that his mother was the Evil Queen wasn't really broken. "I love you, Henry," Regina says again. And he knows. He looks at her and he knows. Because her eyes are unguarded and open, and finally he can see his mother clearly.

And then he needs to be in his mother's arms. He needs to be in her arms, and he needs to know that nothing has changed. That she isn't angry with him. That she loves him just as she always has.

Henry wraps his arms around Regina's neck, clinging tightly. Her arms wrap around his back and cradle him. He feels safe and cherished. "I love you, Mommy." He hears his mom sob softly, and he understands just how completely and truly she loves him.

"I am so sorry for hurting you Henry. I promise that I will never stop trying to make it up to you."

"It's ok," Henry says. His mom is crying, and he has watched her cry almost every day this past year. He's tired of it; he doesn't need her proof in a river of tears. He just needs his mom. "Maybe we can just move forward."

Regina can hardly believe the words she's hearing. She pulls back and looks at her son with wonder in her eyes. How can this be real? Henry smiles and shrugs under her scrutiny. "You're my mom. You aren't the Evil Queen anymore. You can just be my mom."

"I can think of nothing that would make me happier."


	12. Chapter 12

Snow's words echo in Regina's ears. She's sorry. So very sorry. Regina goes over it in her head again and again. Snow had killed Cora. She had been trying to protect her family. It's something that Regina can almost understand. Because she would do anything for her child, and if a powerful witch were a threat to Henry, then Regina would do anything to protect him.

Regina is trying to forgive. Lying in bed with Emma curled up against her, Regina is trying so hard to forgive. To forgive the little girl who had wanted a mother so badly that she had clung to a teenager, only a few years older than herself. Snow had stolen Regina's freedom and the man she loved.

Snow had apologized today, and still Regina wants to claw her eyes out. This little girl who took everything from her. But then the image of Cora crushing Daniel's heart invades Regina's mind. Snow was the one who told the secret, but she was just a stupid, ignorant brat.

Regina's chest burns with the weight of tears and decades of pain. She gets out of bed, as careful as possible not to disturb Emma. She grabs a robe, wraps it around herself tightly, hugging the material to her as if it could block out the cold and the memories and the gnawing realization of the truth of all those years ago.

Regina can't escape the image of her mother crushing Daniel's heart, the image of her mother beating her, the image of her mother accepting Leopold's proposal. The memories crash in on her. She feels Cora's magical strikes to her already bleeding back. She feels Leopold's weight on top of her, feels herself trapped beneath the king that Cora had sold her to. She wants to scream at the top of her lungs, wants to hit something, wants to hurt someone so badly. There's too much inside her, eating away at her, and she feels certain that it will never leave her in peace.

She stumbles down the stairs, letting out a guttural noise somewhere between a scream and a moan once she is far enough away from where Emma or Henry can hear. The rage is boiling inside Regina, familiar and hot and aching to be released.

She catches her reflection in one of her favorite mirrors. She watches her lips quiver as she does her best not to cry. Like this, she looks like a child. Like the child she was before she had been ruined, before she had ruined herself. Had that child been good? That little girl who loved to play outside and ride horses, who was kind to all the servants, and who sang because her father told her she had the voice of an angel.

"Mirror mirror on the wall," her mother had sing-songed as she brushed Regina's long hair. "Who's the fairest of them all?" The chant still echoes in Regina's mind. It still remains a reminder of all that her mother had demanded.

Her mother had insisted on beauty. When Regina would ruin her dresses with mud or her perfect hairstyle by playing with the ringlets, Cora would drag her daughter to the mirror. "You'll never be the fairest in all the land. You look like a filthy peasant." And then the pain. The pain as Cora enchanted the mirror and shards of it sliced against Regina's skin. Never a mark. Just the pain. And the reminder that she was never good enough.

Regina picks up the nearest thing to her hand – a vase – and hurls it at the mirror. Both shatter and Regina watches the shards crash to the floor. She picks up a candlestick, and with impeccable aim shatters the room's other mirror.

Regina stands amid a sea of shattered glass, shards of her reflection staring back at her. She has been so hurt, so very, very hurt. She sinks to her knees. "How could you, mother?" she whispers. "How could you do this?"

There had been good in Regina; she is believing it more and more. Because Emma and Henry look at her with love. And they wouldn't do that if she didn't have some good inside her. Somewhere, hidden away and trembling, there must be something left of that kind, gentle girl.

But if she's good, oh god if she is good, then her mother must be the monster. Because that cruelty is not something that Regina could ever fathom inflicting on Henry. But she had always told herself that it was different with her mother, because Regina herself was different. No one had ever loved her. Certainly it was because she wasn't good enough to be loved.

But she is loved now – Emma and Henry love her so much. And that means that the only option is that her mother had hurt her, had _abused _her – the word feels strange in her mind, just as it had when Archie had suggested it in his office months ago. She had railed against it then and stormed out of the office. But now she lets herself sit with the thought. _Her mother had abused her. _It hadn't been Regina's fault.

Regina hears the footsteps, and she doesn't know how she will explain this away. Surely it's too late to clean up the shards with magic and pretend that nothing happened. Emma is already in the room.

"Regina," Emma whispers in horror, surveying the damage.

Regina is embarrassed that her lover in seeing her like this, and she does her best to muster up the strength to push Emma away effectively. "Go back to bed," she says, her voice icy.

"Christ Regina. Are you kidding?" Emma walks across the minefield of glass shards, and crouches down next to her lover.

Regina seems to lack the strength to stand, but she turns her head away from Emma as tears stream down her face.

"What happened?" Emma asks, feeling frantic at Regina's distress.

Regina sobs. Her hands claw at the carpet. "I hate her," Regina grits out through clenched teeth.

"My mother?" Emma asks, wondering sadly if they could ever be anything like a normal family.

Regina shakes her head mournfully. "Mine."

_About damn time_, Emma thinks. She bites her tongue.

Emma wraps her arm around Regina's waist. There is no way for Regina to conceive of deserving this comfort, this love, and still deserving what her mother did to her. It makes her feel like her head will split in two.

Regina breathes, calms herself, and once she knows that she has enough control, she magics the room clean once more. The mirrors piece themselves back together. The vase mends.

Emma watches as Regina stands and begins to walk away. Emma wrestles with herself for a minute. Regina has always been good at respecting Emma's privacy, at not pushing her to talk. But something tells Emma that letting Regina pretend that this little break down didn't happen would be the wrong thing to do.

"Gina." Regina turns around and smiles at the nickname that Emma has never used before.

"Yes, _Em_."

They look at each other with smiles. Regina can see the care in Emma's eyes, the trust, the love. She walks forward and takes Emma's hands. Regina is overcome with love. It's enough to make her believe that she can do this, be in this relationship, make it work.

Regina leads them back to the bedroom – _their _bedroom it feels more and more like all the time. Regina crawls under the covers, and Emma wraps Regina up in her arms, surprised by how easy it is. She expected a fight, but what she got instead was Regina seeking comfort. Maybe they are making progress.

"I still miss my mother so much," Regina admits once her face is buried tightly in Emma's neck. "I love her, but she never really loved me. If she had, she wouldn't have hurt me or killed Daniel or made me marry the King." She says it like a little girl trying to sort it all out. Trying to understand the incomprehensible: the fact that her mother didn't show her love. Believing for the first time that her mother's version of love was not love after all.

"You have every reason to hate her," Emma promises. "What she did to you," Emma says with a sigh, pushing Regina's hair behind her ear and placing a kiss to Regina's temple. "I'm so sorry. You deserve to be loved." Regina sobs and Emma understands that she's hit on exactly what her lover needs to hear. Emma understands what it feels like to spend your life believing that you were unlovable.

There's a knock on the door then, and Emma curses under her breath. Regina was actually letting Emma hold her. They were _finally _making some progress in talking about Cora.

"Mom?" Henry whispers from outside the door.

Regina stands and goes to him, wiping furiously at her cheeks as she walks. She opens the door to find a very nervous looking kid. "Henry, what's wrong?"

"I heard you screaming, and I heard things break. I…uh…I just wanted to make sure that you're ok."

Regina wraps her arms around Henry, glad that he no longer pulls away from her embrace. "I'm fine, sweetie," she promises, pulling back to offer Henry a reassuring smile. He doesn't look entirely convinced. "Do you want us to tuck you in?"

Emma catches the word with shock: _us_. Regina wants them to tuck Henry in together. She really wants this to work. She wants them to be his parents together. Emma scrambles out of bed, nearly tripping over her feet in her haste to join Henry and Regina.

"Yeah, thanks," Henry says leading the way back to his room. When he sits back on his bed, he asks, "Do you think you could lie down with me until I fall asleep?"

"Of course," Regina replies, slipping into bed next to Henry and wrapping her arm around his shoulders. She looks up at Emma waiting for her to join them. The blonde sits down next to Henry, and as Regina sings him to sleep, Emma can't help but wonder why she had failed to see what a good mother Regina truly was.

Henry is sleeping in a few minutes and Emma is beginning to doze off to the soothing sound of Regina's voice. Regina reaches her hand across Henry and joins it with Emma's making the sheriff smile. This is the first time that Emma has actually been in an adult relationship, and she can hardly believe that Regina is open to her like this so soon after what had happened downstairs. "Let's go back to bed," Regina whispers with a squeeze of Emma's hand.

Regina pulls the blanket over her legs, smoothing it with her nervous hands over and over before talking. "I tried to give Henry everything I never had as a child. I wanted him to feel loved every minute, no matter what he did."

"You're a great mother, Regina." Regina scoffs at that. "I'm serious. Henry and I were looking at your photo albums earlier. You both looked so happy." Emma brushes some hair back from Regina's face so she can see her eyes. "I don't know how you did it. You had no role model for being a good mother, but you were anyway. There are so many things that I love about you, but this Regina," Emma smiles as a tear falls down her cheek. "You gave him what I couldn't. I'm still learning how to be a mother, but you just knew, huh?"

Regina laughs. "I was a nervous wreck. You should have seen me the first few days I had him. Every time he cried I was so afraid that something was wrong. I slept in a rocking chair in his room every night for nearly a week. I couldn't put him down."

Emma leans over to kiss Regina. It hurts to think about the days when Henry was small, days when Emma had sat in a jail cell, mourning the emptiness in her uterus, the complete loneliness that once more consumed her existence. But she had wanted her child to have what she never did. And he had it. Not a parent who would give him up when she found something better, but a mother who would fight tooth and nail for him, who would protect him and love him.

Emma puts everything into that kiss. All her love and gratefulness and awe. She keeps her forehead rested against Regina's as their lips pull apart. "You deserved to have a mother who cared for you like that." Emma presses a soft peck to Regina's lips.

"It's hard to believe sometimes, you know?"

"Trust me I do."

"Oh Emma," Regina says, stroking Emma's cheek lovingly. "I love you so much." She stares at the wall in front of her again, avoids Emma's eyes. "I've done such terrible things."

"There's no changing the past," Emma reminds Regina.

"You're right," Regina says, a look of clarity and peace overcoming her. "I'm going to try to be better, Emma. For you and Henry and me. I promise."

"You already are."

"It terrifies me. The thought of being _Regina_ again. Not the Evil Queen; just Regina."

"If it helps, I'm scared shitless too. Not of Regina," Emma clarifies. "But you know, of being in a relationship. It's been a long time."

Regina chuckles. "I suppose we can be afraid together then."

"Yeah," Emma agrees, feeling oddly comforted as she lays her head on Regina's shoulder. "Together."


	13. Chapter 13

"Hello. Dr. Hopper speaking."

"Good morning Dr. Hopper. This is-"

"Regina! It's good to hear from you."

Regina is caught off-guard by the therapist's enthusiasm. "Thank you," she says uncomfortably.

"What can I do for you?"

"I was wondering whether you have time to begin seeing me again."

"Yes, of course. Your regular time is still available. Does that still work for you?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Of course, Regina. I'm very glad that you've decided to come back to therapy. Do you want to start today or wait until next week?"

"Today will be fine, as long as it isn't a problem for you."

"No, not at all. I'll see you this afternoon then."

"Very well. I'll see you then."

"Goodbye, Regina."

"Bye." She ends the call and stares down at the phone in her hands. Unearthing the things that she is certain to in Archie's office is going to be painful without a doubt. But she needs to do this. Her life – the beautiful life filled with love that has surprised her these last few weeks – is worth the work. Henry is worth the work. Emma is worth it. Maybe Regina herself is even worth it too.

* * *

"Good morning," Emma says snaking her arms around Regina's waist and pressing her lips to Regina's neck. She hasn't let herself be all in like this since Neal.

"Morning, dear," Regina says, covering Emma's hands with her own and leaning into the blonde's touch. "Did you sleep ok?"

"Mmmhmm," Emma says, closing her eyes and breathing in the scent of Regina's skin. "Did you?" Emma asks. She usually hears when Regina wakes up, and she's pretty sure the brunette slept through the rest of the night after they had gone back to bed.

"Yeah." Regina turns around in Emma's arms. "I need to get to work. There's coffee."

"Want to meet me on my lunch break?"

"I can't today. I have an appointment with Archie." Emma pulls back and looks at Regina with a surprised smile.

"Don't look so shocked, dear. You found me smashing mirrors last night."

"Oh, I didn't mean, uh…I'm sorry."

Regina chuckles. "No need to apologize. Why don't you leave work early? Now that I'm the mayor again, technically you work for me. I'm picking Henry up at school at 3. Why don't you meet us at home, and we can take a hike?"

Emma wants to tell Regina how proud she is of her for going back to therapy. Emma wants to say that she wishes that she had the strength to work through her own issues. But the moment is passed. "Sounds good. Anything else I can do for you boss?" Emma asks with a wicked smile.

Regina glances at the clock, decides that she can be a few minutes late, and pulls Emma up the stairs to their bedroom.

* * *

Emma sits on the bed watching as Regina unzips her skirt. "Need help?" Emma asks with a smirk.

"No dear," Regina says, smiling and stepping out of her clothes. "The kind of help that you have in mind and we will never leave for this hike."

"That's ok, I don't mind."

"I believe Henry would." Regina strides across the room in nothing but her panties and her unbuttoned blouse. It feels incredibly domestic and comfortable.

"Fine," Emma says with an exaggerated pout, not bothering to hide the way she's staring at her lover's behind. "As long as you're about to put on a pair of yoga pants."

"Actually, I was going to put on shorts since it's rather warm outside."

"Wait! You own shorts?" Emma asks incredulously.

"You don't know _everything_ about me." Regina raises an eyebrow at Emma. She pulls out a pair of khaki shorts. "Did you think I did my gardening in pants suits?"

"I don't know," Emma says, her forehead crinkling in deep thought. The expression makes Regina smile brightly.

Regina slips the shorts and a tank top on and saunters over to Emma. "Does this meet your approval?" she asks straddling Emma's legs.

"Yes ma'am."

* * *

Emma had gone over to her parents' apartment after dinner, and Henry had decided that he and Regina should make it a movie night. It took little effort, of course, to convince Regina to spend the evening sitting with her son on the couch, trying to catch poorly thrown popcorn in their mouths, and watching the most recent ninja turtles movie.

Regina spends most of the movie thinking and staring at Henry. Her conversations with Archie from earlier in the day are bouncing around in her head unsettlingly.

When the credits roll, Regina turns off the television, and nervously asks, "You know I love you, don't you Henry?"

"Yeah."

"Good," Regina says, running a hand over Henry's hair and trying to gauge whether it's the truth. He looks up at her confused, wondering why his mom suddenly feels the need for this declaration in the middle of movie time. "It's important that you know. I've made so many mistakes, and I am very sorry for how they've affected you. But I need you to know that I love you. You are so special and so loved my darling."

"I know. I promise Mom, I always knew you loved me. I was just mad and kind of confused."

"Ok," Regina says, smiling at him sadly. She hates herself for causing him pain. She reaches forward and kisses Henry's forehead. And then all of a sudden Regina is watching as her son's face crumbles and he begins to cry.

"Henry," Regina asks, lifting his chin to look at her. "What's wrong?" He throws his arms around Regina and buries his face in her chest. "Henry?" Regina repeats, wrapping her arms around him, and leaning down to kiss his head again.

He cries and cries. It's been a year since he's had the comfort of his mother. And now that he has her again, now that his safety is back, he finally lets himself cry over the pain and uncertainty of these last couple of years.

He's clinging so hard to Regina, and so she gathers him up in her lap like she had when he was small and holds him tightly. She isn't sure exactly what this is about, but she guesses that it's something big, that he's letting out all the pain that he's been holding inside.

When Henry finally runs out of tears, Regina squeezes his arm gently and asks, "Are you ok?"

"Yeah," he whispers without moving.

"What was that all about, sweetheart?"

Henry shrugs. All he says is, "I missed you."

"I'm here now, Henry." Regina leans down and kisses his hair. "I'll always be here."

And then Henry's crying again, because he realizes with such relief that she has always been there. Even when he was pushing her away, she was there waiting for him. He buries his face tighter into his mother's chest.

"It's ok," Regina reassures him. "I love you Henry." She wants to repeat it again and again. Wants him to know with certainty that he is loved more than anything in the world. "I love you."

"I love you too," Henry sobs into his mom's chest as she holds him. She rubs his back, presses her cheek to the crown of his head, and tries to love him enough to soothe the pain.

* * *

It's 10:30 when Regina is finally able to pull herself away from her son's bedside. She had stayed and watched as he slept, watched every breath he took, and thought how incredibly thankful she was. How even if she deserved nothing good in this life, she had received more good than anyone has a right to expect or hope for in her little boy. She had repeated a promise to him over and over in her head: that she would be the mother that he needs. She will stick it out with Archie, with the sessions that make her want to scream and cry and rage for all that she's lived through, if it means she can be free to be the mother than her son needs.

Regina is pacing the living room now. Five texts to Emma have gone without response, and Regina is close to breaking down and calling Snow and David when she spies Emma's car parked on the street in front of the house. Regina hurries outside, her mind coming up with scenarios as to why Emma would be sitting in front of the house, refusing to come inside. None of them is good.

Regina peeks inside the bug as she approaches. Emma's forehead is leaning against the steering wheel, and from the way her body is shaking Regina can tell that Emma is crying.

Regina opens the driver's side door. "Emma," she whispers, crouching down next to her lover. The sobs are loud and gut-wrenching, and Regina can feel everyone stabbing at her own chest. She reaches out and covers one of Emma's hands with her own. "What happened?"

"They put me in a wardrobe," Emma chokes out. She feels stupid for still not being over it, for picking a fight with her parents, for letting herself get angry and yell at them. "How could someone do that to a baby? What did they think would happen? They sent me through a wardrobe to another world when I was a few minutes old." Emma sucks in a breath between sobbed words. "They had no idea what would happen, only that a prophecy said that I would come back for them in 28 years! Well, great, the kid lives to be 28, so who cares what happens to it until then. They didn't know if I would ever be loved, and they didn't care." She looks up at Regina, desperate to see the eyes of someone who does love her, who does care.

"I don't believe that Emma," Regina says, though her anger towards Snow and Charming is growing again. Because how do you hold baby Emma in your arms and ever let her go? How do you send your child away to an uncertain future?

"They wanted me to save them," Emma says sadly. All she had ever been to anyone – even her parents – was the Savior.

"I'm so sorry Emma."

"No Regina. This isn't about you. This is about the fact that my _parents_ cared more about stopping you than they did about me. If it had been you, I know you would have held onto Henry. You would have held him and loved him no matter what." Emma is sobbing out her words now. "Why didn't anyone want to hold onto me?"

Regina pulls Emma to her chest. "I am not letting go of you. Do you hear me, Emma? I am never letting you go."

Emma sobs. "No one has ever wanted to keep me."

"I want you," Regina whispers into Emma's ear. "I will always want you. And I am going to keep you for as long as you want me."

"I can't be without you," Emma admits. She hates the idea of giving someone so much power over her. She doesn't know how she would survive losing Regina.

"You won't have to be. As long as you want me, I promise I will be here."

"Stop saying that," Emma says looking at Regina. "I just told you that I can't be without you. Of course I want you."

Regina looks at the sincerity in her lover's eyes. "This is new for me too," she says by way of apology. "But we will figure it out together, alright?"

"Ok," Emma says, sniffling and getting herself back under control.

"Why don't we go inside?" Regina asks, her thighs aching from crouching.

"I don't want Henry to see me like this."

"He's asleep," Regina says as she stands and extends a hand to Emma.

Regina wraps her arm around Emma's waist as they walk into the house without a question as to why Emma was sitting outside in her car. There is nothing but concern and love in Regina's touch, and Emma is more certain than ever that she is undeserving of what she has.

Emma closes the bedroom door behind them, pulls away from Regina, and comes clean: "I almost left."

"What?" Regina feels a shiver run through her.

"I drove to the town line. After I saw my parents, I just wanted to run. I drove to the town line, and I sat there for hours trying to get myself to leave."

Regina's whole body stiffens. Familiar feelings overwhelm her. She's about to be left all alone. Again. She can feel the rage settling itself in her chest. The anger that is so much easier than the betrayal and the sorrow and the knowledge that she is once again not enough. She breathes. Tries to calm herself. Deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Regina," Emma says, moving into her lover's space. Regina takes a step back, before immediately catching herself. _No._ She isn't going to do this. She isn't going to push Emma away.

"It's ok, dear."

Emma shakes her head. She sees the way that Regina's entire demeanor has changed, and she hates herself for being the cause of it. "Shit, I'm sorry. I just freaked out, and I wanted to run so badly."

None of it is helping. All Regina can hear is that Emma wanted to run. Regina tries to bring her reaction under control, tries to say the right thing. "You didn't though. You came back."

"I'm sorry Regina," Emma says again. She just wants to hear Regina tell her that it's ok. That she's forgiven for what she almost did. That Regina is happy that Emma came back.

Regina forces a smile onto her face. "It's fine," she says stiffly. She can't stay here. She can't comfort Emma, because having the blonde fall apart in her arms will only make Regina want to take care of her and love her more. And Regina can't love Emma right now. Because Emma is going to leave. She is going to leave, and then Regina is going to be alone again. "I need to shower."

Regina walks into the bathroom, closes the door behind her, and tries to remember how to be alone.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Thanks to everyone for reading and for all the wonderful feedback. I hope you enjoy this chapter._

* * *

"Henry," Regina says, leaning over her sleeping son and gently rubbing his arm.

Henry groans and throws a pillow over his head.

"Oh no you don't!" Regina grabs the pillow from Henry's hands.

"Ten more minutes."

"No way, mister. You already had your extra ten minutes."

Henry rolls over, reluctantly opens his eyes, and gives Regina his best puppy dog face. "Ten more minutes. Pleeeeaaase."

She's missed this. Silly, goofy Henry in the morning is Regina's favorite way to start the day. "Come on," she says, standing up and grabbing the covers off Henry. "Time to get up or the tickle monster is going to get you."

"Mooomm," Henry whines, curling into a fetal position and refusing to get up, now on the sheer principle of the matter.

"Five, four, three," Regina warns. "Two and a half, two, one and a half, one and a quarter –"

"I'm up. I'm up." Henry hops out of bed; the threat of tickling is always particularly effective. "You're evil," he declares playfully, before realizing the weight that the word carries now.

But Regina just shrugs it off with a grin. "You bet I am. Now get in the shower. I'll have pancakes waiting for you when you get downstairs."

"With chocolate chips?" Henry asks hopefully.

"With chocolate chips," Regina confirms, before Henry grabs his towel and dashes from the room.

* * *

"Have a good day, sweetie."

"You too, Mom. Are you picking me up or should I take the bus home?"

"I'm not going into the office today, so I can come and get you."

"Cool. Thanks."

"You're welcome. I love you Henry," she adds before he leaves the car.

"I love you too," Henry replies, and then, even though they're parked in front of the school where anyone can see, he leans over to give his mom a hug.

"See you later," Henry says, before closing the car door and sprinting towards the door to his school.

Regina watches him go, so filled with love and joy and hope that she barely recognizes herself.

Regina isn't ready to go home and face Emma yet, so she decides to park her car and take a walk along the docks. The sky is overcast, and Regina wonders if it's about to rain. She pulls her coat around herself as she stares up at the gathering clouds up above.

"Good morning, Regina," Archie says, as he and Pongo walk towards her.

"Good morning," Regina replies. Pongo strides up to Regina, and begins nudging at her hand until she pets him. "Good morning, Pongo."

"Are you ok?" Archie asks, voice full of concern. Regina wonders sometimes whether the therapist has psychic powers.

"I'm afraid I've been better."

"What's wrong?"

"I don't want to trouble you when you're out for a walk."

"Nonsense. It isn't any trouble." Archie genuinely likes the Regina. He had been a bit frightened the first time she showed up at his office, but he had grown to enjoy their sessions. Archie would gladly admit that he rather appreciates Regina's wit and sarcasm, and once she had begun to share pieces of her past, Archie would never again be able to see her as the Evil Queen he had heard so many stories of in the old world.

"Are you certain?" Regina asks, not wanting to be a bother.

"Of course. Would you like to go back to my office?"

"Perhaps I can join you and Pongo on your walk instead." The Dalmatian perks his head up at hearing his name, and Regina gives him a scratch behind the ears.

"Pongo certainly seems fond of the idea," Archie says, and the three of them set off along the path. "What is it that's troubling you?"

"Last night, Emma told me something that upset me."

"What was that?"

"She came home from her visiting her parents quite upset. Evidently they had an argument, and after Emma left their house, she drove to the town line and spent several hours sitting there and deciding whether to leave Storybrooke."

"That must have been very difficult for you to deal with," Archie says sympathetically. Honestly the incident couldn't have come at a much worse time for Regina, after she had spent the afternoon on his couch talking about how she loses everyone she loves.

Regina nods, and Archie asks, a bit nervous to hear the answer, "How did you react when she told you?"

"I felt very angry, but I knew that it wasn't about Emma. What she did, it brought up my feelings about not being good enough for anyone." Archie smiles encouragingly. They had been spending weeks before she left therapy discussing the importance of Regina not letting herself be caught up in the moment. He had taught her to stop, name her emotions, and try to understand where they were coming from. She seems to be doing remarkably well at that task, in Archie's opinion.

"I know that Emma loves me. I do," Regina repeats, testing the idea out, and finding that she does actually believe in Emma's love for her. "I didn't think that I would be able to react to Emma without pushing her away, so I took a long shower and went to sleep."

"You should be very proud of yourself," Archie tells Regina. "You recognized that you weren't ready to deal with the situation well. That takes a lot of self-awareness."

"I'm still afraid that Emma is going to leave."

"Did you two talk this morning?"

"No. She was asleep when I left to drive Henry to school. I've been trying to think about what to say before going home." Archie smiles again. He really is very proud of Regina right now. "Emma was so upset last night. I found her crying in her car and talking about how no one has ever loved her. I want her to know that I love her. She needs to know that she's loved," Regina insists, remembering how devastating it was to watch Emma cry. "I shut down once she told me about leaving town, and she still needed to be reassured."

"That may be true, but it _is _ok to think about what you need too. You needed that time to control your reaction, and that's ok."

Regina considers that with a nod. "How do I get past how afraid I am that she's going to leave me?"

"Perhaps you could ask her to explain her motives for wanting to leave. I think that you may find that it was a bad reaction in the moment and that she, just like you, was able to move past that moment. She didn't leave after all."

"You're right. She didn't leave, and I should be there for her. She had an awful night, and she needed me."

"It's good to want to be there for Emma, but don't forget that it's important to talk to her about your feelings as well. It may help just to share your fears with her."

"Yes. Thank you Dr. Hopper."

"You're very welcome. And if you need to talk later, don't hesitate to call me."

"I won't. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your walk."

Regina hurries off towards her car, eager to talk to Emma and try to make this right.

* * *

Regina walks into living room where Emma is sitting and anxiously waiting. She's nursing her third cup of coffee, which is no doubt not helping her anxiety.

"Can we talk?" Regina asks, as she sits down next to Emma on the couch.

"I am so sorry. So, so sorry. Please forgive me," Emma begs, nearly frantic. She's so afraid that she is about to lose Regina. The brunette reaches out, takes Emma's hand, and offers a reassuring smile. It calms Emma a bit, though not nearly enough, as her heart continues to pound in her ears.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you last night. You needed someone, and I wasn't able to be what you needed."

"No, Regina-" Emma begins, but Regina puts up a hand to stop her.

"When you told me that you almost left, it reminded me of every time that I've lost the people I love. It made me feel," her voice becomes gravely. Revealing this to Emma makes Regina feel incredibly vulnerable and foolish. "It made me feel like I always have, like I wasn't worth loving or being with."

Emma grasps Regina's hand with both of hers. "I'm sorry," she repeats again, because oh god, she is just so sorry. If she could take it back, she would in a second. "It wasn't about you."

"I know that rationally," Regina says with a nod. "But it's hard to turn off years of feeling like I was never good enough."

"You're the reason that I decided to come back." Regina raises an eyebrow skeptically. She wonders if Emma is simply trying to say the right thing. "It's true Regina. I love you, and as much as I wanted to run, what I wanted more was what we have. I've never been happier than I am with you. It's just that when I freak out, my default mode is to run."

"I know."

"I didn't want to hurt you, you know that right? That's the last thing I want to do."

"And what about Henry?" Regina asks, because _he _should be the most important thing to them.

"I didn't…"

"He needs you."

"You tried to push me out of his life for so long, and now he needs me?"

Regina doesn't take the bait. "I know I did, and now I am trying to be a better mother to him. Henry loves you and thinks of you as one of his mothers. I can't bare the thought of watching him lose you."

"Are we talking about you or Henry?"

Regina's anger flares. She pulls her hand from Emma's grasp. "I love you and it scares me to death to think about you leaving, but you are a fool if you think for a second that's I care about anything more than Henry."

Regina is a mother before anything else, and the idea of someone hurting her child makes her blood boil. She calms herself down, reminds herself that Emma loves Henry too, that they really do both want what is best for him.

"Henry spent last night crying," Regina says.

"Why?"

"The last couple of years have been very hard for him. I know that was all my fault, and I hate myself for that, but I will do anything to keep him from having to hurt like that again." Regina moves closer to Emma, gives her thigh a squeeze. "I don't want to put pressure on you again, Emma. I know that this year has been very difficult for you, and that more has been expected of you than anyone has any right to ask. But you're in Henry's life now, and he needs you to stay in his life."

"He has you," Emma says, trying to reassure herself that Henry would be ok without her. The idea of people depending on her scares her; always has.

"I have always tried to make sure that Henry knew that family wasn't about blood; it's about the people who take care of you and love you no matter what. You're one of those people to Henry now. You're more than just his birthmother. You're his mother."

Hearing it so plainly makes Emma's heart begin to beat rapidly. Regina's hand caresses Emma's cheek and pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. "You're a good mother, and you're not alone, ok? We have each other, if that's what you want."

"I do. Thank you, Regina. I really am so sorry."

"I know," Regina says with a smile. "But if you think about leaving again, _please _think of Henry. You're a mother now, and you cannot just walk away from him. It'll break his heart."

"I don't…" Emma trails off at a loss for words. This is why she gave the kid up the first time. She didn't think she was able to be a good mother, to stick around for her child. Maybe Emma at 17 knew more than she did at 27 when she decided to reenter Henry's life.

"You pushed me to be a better mother, and I'm here to help you be better too. Our son deserves that."

"He does," Emma agrees. And then, because Regina has been so open and honest today, Emma dares to do the same. "I'm afraid to let him down. I'm afraid to let you both down. I already have."

Regina smiles at Emma and shakes her head. Regina can see how very hard Emma is trying, so she leans forward and captures the blonde's lips. "You didn't let us down. Something happened, and now we're talking about it. I hear this is what couples do," Regina adds with a smile and a squeeze of Emma's hand.

"Mature, adult couples at least. When have I ever seemed to you like a mature adult?" Emma jokes. But damn if it isn't the truth. She had never needed to be an adult until Henry showed up at her door. She will just have to try harder to be an adult now: for Henry and for Regina.

Regina wraps her arm around Emma's shoulders and pulls Emma against her chest. Emma settles her head against Regina's neck, the relief that Regina really is still here overwhelming her. She feels exhausted and drained despite all the coffee she's consumed. Regina kisses Emma's forehead. "I love you," the brunette whispers. "What I told you yesterday, about always being here, I meant that."

"I did too," Emma says, relishing the feeling of Regina holding her. "I know that's hard to believe because I'm an idiot, but it's true."

Regina is surprised by how much she truly does believe it. She leans down and gives Emma a soft kiss. "Are you ok?"

"I am now," the blonde says. They made it through this – their first fight – well first fight as a couple at least – and they're ok. "Are you?"

"Yes, my dear. I feel much better now. The cricket might be right. Talking things out really does seem to help."

Emma chuckles, and burrows her face further into Regina's neck. She closes her eyes, almost immediately beginning to drift off to sleep after a restless night.

"Why don't we go upstairs for a while?" Regina suggests, as Emma begins to doze on her shoulder.

"Make-up sex?" Emma asks.

Regina smiles, feeling relaxed and happy with the woman she loves in her arms. She stands, pulling Emma up with her, never losing contact. "I was thinking of a make-up nap first."

"Ok," Emma agrees, as the walk towards the stairs with their arms around each other. "As long as you don't forget about the make-up sex after."

Regina turns and presses a kiss to Emma's cheek. "You have yourself a deal."


	15. Chapter 15

"What are you staring at?" Regina asks, turning from the grill to glare at Emma.

Emma shrugs with a smile. "I just never imagined you wearing shorts and barbequing."

"It's Memorial Day."

"Yeah, and you're from another land," Emma notes as she takes a sip of the ice tea Regina had brewed this morning.

"I've lived in this one for quite a while now. It wouldn't do for a political figure to not celebrate national holidays." Emma watches as a smile overcomes Regina's face, and the real answer as to why she celebrates this holiday leaks from her lips. "When I adopted Henry, I decided to start celebrating all of this world's holidays. Before him, it didn't seem to much matter. But I wanted Henry to have everything." Regina turns to Emma with a grin. "If you're going to be part of this family, you better get used to this. We very much enjoy our big holiday celebrations here."

That word – _family _– it makes a wave of panic overcome Emma. She loves Regina and Henry. And still the idea of family fills Emma with such fear. She wonders if the feeling will ever leave her.

Henry bounds out the door holding a stack of plates and silverware in his hands and heading towards where Emma is sitting at the outdoor table. She pushes the anxiety from her mind and smiles at her son, standing and taking the forks and knives from him to help set the table.

"Ma?"

"Yeah kid."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Why didn't you want to keep me?"

"Oh, Henry," Emma says with a sigh, because she had somehow believed that this issue was put to rest. She sinks into the closest chair, her knees suddenly feeling weak beneath her. "I told you, I wanted to give you your best chance." The words feel like they aren't sufficient anymore. They had been suitable for a 10-year-old who believed in fairy tales, but not for this boy who is coming to understand the world in more than black and white. "Look Henry, I just wasn't ready to be a mother then."

"But you are now?" Henry asks.

_No_, Emma's brain screams. _I almost left you._ _What kind of mother abandons her child?_ It's been nearly two months since that day she almost crossed the line, but there have been others hasn't driven back there again, but she's afraid that she will. When things get hard her brain still screams at her to run. "Yeah," Emma lies with a smile.

Apparently Regina has developed an ability to see right through Emma, because when Regina catches Emma's eyes, the blonde knows with certainly that her lover can see her doubts and guilt. Regina strides over to them, and a firm hand squeezes Emma's shoulder.

"Why weren't you ready to be a mother?" Henry asks.

"Henry," Emma sighs, "I was only 17."

"Mom always told me that she was really scared before she got me, but from second she held me she knew she was meant to be my mom." Regina's eyes tear up, because she never thought that this would be something that Henry would remember or cherish the way he clearly does.

Regina can feel Emma trembling beneath her hand, and after a moment it become clear that the blonde is at a loss for words, caught up in her own fears that Henry will never understand the choice that she made. "Come here," Regina tells her son, and he walks to stand beside her. He looks up at her with trusting eyes. It's an expression that she hadn't believe she would ever see again. Regina lowers herself to sit on the arm of Emma's chair so that she can be face to face with Henry.

"When I held you for the first time, Henry, it changed my life. I loved you so much, and from that minute on I knew I would do anything for you. I looked at you and all I wanted was to love you and take care of you." She smiles and reaches out to brush a stray piece of hair back from Henry's forehead. "Emma looked at you when you were born and she loved you so much too. She wanted to take care of you, Henry, but she knew that she wouldn't be able to do that the way you needed. So her way of taking care of you then was to make sure that you went to a family that would be able to take care of you the way she couldn't yet."

Henry finally looks away from Regina and at Emma, who is hunched over and crying. "Ma?" he asks, wanting confirmation that this explanation that Regina has always offered is true.

Emma looks up when Henry calls her. She tries to stifle the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Your mom's right, Henry. I held you when you were born and I loved you so much." She tries not to choke on the tears burning at the memory. Regina turns to wrap an arm around Emma's shoulders. "Handing you back to the nurse was the hardest thing that I ever had to do. But I wanted you to have a good life, and I knew you wouldn't have had that with me." It's the truth – part of it. Giving Henry up had been a decision for both of them. She had done what was right for her kid, but also for herself, because she was an angry teenager who had a baby in jail after her boyfriend let her take the fall for him. She deserved a chance too, didn't she? But Emma decides that Henry doesn't need to hear the selfish reasons. "I really did love you Henry. I promise. I just couldn't keep you."

Henry moves forward and wraps his arms both of his mothers. They hold him tightly, and wonder if together they can mend the hurts of the past and move forward somehow.

* * *

"Ow!" Henry yells, his elbow grazing against the grill when he reaches for the plate of food that Regina has asked him to bring to the table.

"Can I see?" Regina coaxes, as Henry clutches his injured arm to his body. He extends his arm with tears of pain in his eyes.

For a second Regina is overwhelmed by the memory of Cora reaching out to soothe a burn on her arm. Cora had spoken so gently that Regina had truly believed that her mother only meant to take away the pain. But then she had yanked her daughter's arm into a magically burning fire, holding Regina in the flames for what felt like endless minutes.

Regina takes Henry's arm with the gentlest of touches. His elbow is already blistering. "It hurts," Henry whimpers, a tear trailing down his cheek.

"I know baby," Regina tells her son, one hand reaching to wipe the tear from his cheek. Then she asks nervously, "Can I heal it with magic?" Henry seems to be considering this for a long moment. "It's ok. Let's go run it under cold water." Regina leans forward and places a gentle kiss on Henry's arm, far enough from the injury not to cause pain.

Henry smiles then, remembering each moment that his mother had kissed his boo-boos better. "Can you heal it?"

Regina's eyes widen at the shocking amount of trust her son is placing in her. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

Henry watches with fascination as his skin mends and the pain disappears. "Thanks Mom."

"You're welcome sweetheart." Regina runs a hand through Henry's hair. "Does it still hurt?" she asks. Her arm throbs at the memory of the weeks her skin had burned excruciatingly until her mother had deemed the lesson learned.

"No. It's all better."

"I'm glad." Regina presses another kiss to Henry's elbow. "Do you think you can bring the burgers to the table without hurting yourself again?"

Henry rolls his eyes. "Of course, Mom."

"Thank you, sweetheart."

He runs off to the table – her beautiful, smiling little boy.

* * *

Emma rolls over expecting to snuggle up to Regina's chest. When she's met with thigh, she opens her eyes to find Regina sitting up against the headboard. In the dim light, Emma can see the far away expression on Regina's face. Emma sits up and silently slips her hand into Regina's.

"I never expected to feel like this," Regina murmurs so quietly that Emma has to strain to hear the words.

"Yeah," Emma agrees.

"It's different than it was with Daniel."

Emma tries to hide how much this hurts. "That's ok. I don't need –"

"No!" Regina nearly yells, hearing the pain in Emma's voice. "I didn't mean that. This is…" she trails off. _So much more_. It feels like a betrayal. Emma's brow furrows in confusion. "I loved Daniel," Regina says, partly to herself, because everything that she is feeling now is making her question what she had with Daniel all those years ago. "But you…" Regina shakes her head in disbelief. "I love you so much." A tear falls down Regina's cheek.

"Hey," Emma says, kissing a wet cheek. "I love you too."

"I know you do," Regina answers with a melancholy smile. "You make me content just to be who I am, and that is the best gift that anyone has given me. Well, other than Henry," she says looking at Emma. "But you gave me that gift too."

Panic rises in Emma's chest, because everyday she feels like she is getting in deeper. Everyday they need each other more. "This is all that I want, Regina," Emma says with a squeeze to her lover's hand. "It scares me more than you know, but I just want to stay here with you and Henry." Her voice breaks as she tries to hold back tears.

"So stay."

"Like move in with you?"

"Practically, it wouldn't be any different." And while it is true that Emma has shared Regina's bed every night since returning to Storybrooke, the idea of officially living together feels different.

A long moment passes in silence, and just as Regina is about to tell Emma to forget it, that it was a stupid idea anyway, Emma swallows the lump in her throat and nods. "Yeah. I think I want to give it a try."

"You don't have to if it isn't what you want."

"No," Emma says, her voice stronger this time. "I want to be with you. I'm just scared."

Regina tries to ignore how much Emma's fear frightens her and just be what Emma needs. Regina unclasps their hands so that she can wrap her arm around Emma's shoulder and pull Emma against her. "That's ok. This is still new, and you're allowed to be afraid."

Emma closes her eyes and burrows her face into Regina's neck. "I'll pack up the rest of my things when I visit Mary Margaret and David."

Regina kisses Emma's forehead. This is complicated and real. And it truly is so different from what she had with Daniel years ago. But the feeling in Regina's chest when she holds Emma is wonderful – protectiveness and joy and _love_ – love in a way she never knew existed. Regina pushes the thoughts of Daniel from her mind as she lies down, pulling Emma with her. Regina strokes her hands through Emma's hair, closes her eyes, and tries to sleep.


	16. Chapter 16

Wednesday afternoon could not have come soon enough for Regina. She's surprised by how much she has come to rely on talking to Archie.

"How do I stop feeling so afraid?" Regina asks when she sits down in the therapist's office.

"Afraid of what?"

Regina instantly feels herself becoming choked up. She speaks around the lump in her throat. "Losing them," she says, her voice breaking. A sob bursts from Regina's lips before she can stop it. Her hand flies to her mouth, horrified at the way her emotions are betraying her again. "I'm sorry," she mutters, reaching for a tissue and wiping furiously at her cheeks that seem to be getting wetter by the second no matter how hard she tries to control herself.

"Why are you sorry?" Regina huffs out an annoyed sigh but says nothing. "It's ok to cry here, Regina."

Regina quiets her tears, and Archie asks, "What's making you feel afraid that you're going to lose Henry and Emma?"

"Emma is moving in with me."

Archie waits to see if Regina will explain further.

"I'm _so_ happy," Regina says. Tears cascade down her cheeks again, and she dabs at them.

"It sounds like things are going well with Emma. Why do you believe that you are going to lose her?"

"I lose everyone that I love."

"You haven't lost Henry, have you?"

"I almost-" she sobs again, remembering what it had felt like to watch her son walk away from her. "I've been sitting in his bedroom at night, just watching him sleep. If he leaves me again, I want to remember everything."

"Why would he want to leave you?"

It hurts so much. "I'm trying to be a good mother," she cries. "I'm trying so hard to be good enough for both of them."

"Why do you think that you aren't good enough? It sounds like you've been nothing but supportive of Emma. And besides hiding the curse from him, I have never known you to do something that would hurt Henry."

"I think we are both aware that I'm not a very good person."

"I don't believe that, Regina." Archie shakes his head fervently. "You may have done things that you regret in the past, but you have worked very hard to change and to love Henry and Emma well. And I truly believe that is what counts."

Regina shakes her head. "My mother told me something when she first found me. She said that I had been too bad for too long to change."

"Do you think that she might have said that so that you would go back to her?"

"It doesn't matter. She was right. I don't deserve another chance."

"I would like to tell you something personal. I know that isn't what psychologists are supposed to do, but as you pointed out yourself, I only got my PhD from a curse."

Regina nods with a small smile.

"I asked the Blue Fairy to turn me into a cricket because I needed to make amends for something awful that I had done." He waits for her to ask, but she doesn't. "I was responsible for taking away a little boy's parents."

"Gepetto?"

"Yes. I became a cricket to help guide him. I hated myself for who I had let myself become. But after what happened, I vowed to change and make it right. I haven't made it right, because you can never change the past. But you _can _change the future for yourself and the people you care about. I've made peace with the past. I kept doing good, and I believe that made me good."

Regina stares at Archie. He was the embodiment of good in their old world, and here he sits telling her that he hadn't always been that.

"The curse gave me a rather vast knowledge of psychology. It's a perspective that we weren't raised with, and so I never truly understood why I acted the way I had as a young man. I think there is value in what we are doing here Regina. I believe that understanding the reasons you acted as you did in the past will help you forgive yourself and move on."

Regina considers this for a minute, wondering for the first time whether she really might be something other than evil and unlovable at her core. "You make quite the pitch for your services, Dr. Hopper. I can see why you are so successful."

Archie smiles and allows Regina her defenses for the moment.

"Perhaps next week we can begin to discuss your childhood. How would you feel about that?" Archie watches as a flash of fear washes over Regina's face. "We don't need to talk about anything that you aren't ready for."

"No, you're right. I need to do that. I can't today, but I think next week that I can be ready."

Archie smiles encouragingly. "Very good."

* * *

Emma tapes up the cardboard box while Mary Margaret sips a cup of coffee. The bed that has been Emma's for over a year is stripped. A whole year – it's the longest she has ever spent in a single bed.

"You don't need to move out Emma."

"You and David should have your own space."

"We love having you here, you know that."

"It's not like I'll be that far away," Emma says, putting down the roll of duct tape. "Nothing is going to change between us, Mary Margaret."

Snow sighs, knows there is no way for that statement to be true. "She's already taken you from me once."

"That's not what's happening here. Regina isn't forcing me to do anything."

"I know that you trust her, Emma, but you have to understand why that is hard for me."

"I do," Emma says sitting down on the edge of the bed next to her mother. "Look, we'll have dinner together every week. This really won't be so different."

"I don't want to see you get hurt."

Emma thinks of Regina. Of her fear that Emma will leave, of the terror that creeps into her eyes anytime that Emma is late coming home from work. She wonders if she can keep from hurting Regina.

"Regina won't hurt me."

"I know that you think that you know her," Snow says reaching out and putting a hand on Emma's knee. "But you didn't know her before. She has done terrible things to our family. She tried to kill me. She killed your grandfather."

Emma feels the rage well up inside her. She stands, unable to take the feeling of Mary Margaret's hand on her in this moment. Regina has never said the words, but Emma sees the way that her lover's whole demeanor changes anytime that Leopold or her marriage is mentioned, the way she shuts down and all warmth disappears and the old walls come back up.

"Don't," Emma warns, overcome by the memory of Regina in bed this morning. Finally, finally trusting Emma to press her down onto the mattress. Regina had stared into Emma's eyes the whole time, as if needing to remind herself constantly whose weight was on top of her.

"Emma," Snow says with a sigh. "You can't just forget what she's done."

Emma closes her eyes, her hands curling into fists, tries desperately to keep herself from lashing out. _Do you know what he did to her?_ she wants to scream. Emma thinks that she would happily tear Leopold limb from limb herself if he were still alive. "I haven't forgotten the past," Emma says through gritted teeth. "Have you?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Emma bites her tongue because the last person in the world that Regina would want to know this is Snow. "Nothing. Can we just not argue?"

Snow forces a smile, unable to fight the feeling that she is loosing her daughter again.

Emma can't deal with her mother right now – with the expectations and the disappointment. She needs to see Regina, because somewhere along the line, Regina had become Emma's safety. She had become the place that Emma runs to when she's scared, and she needs that right now. "I've got to get going," Emma says. "But why don't I come over for dinner this weekend."

"Ok," Mary Margaret agrees, though the sorrow is still etched on her face.

Emma gives the other woman a quick hug and turns to leave.

* * *

Emma comes walks into her new home carrying her cardboard box. Her heart pounds at the newness of this commitment as she sets the box down and searches out Regina. This is _their_ home now. It's where Emma will go at the end of everyday, whether it has been good or bad or awful enough to make her want to run, Emma promises herself that she will still come home.

Emma spies Regina sitting on the bench swing in the backyard, obviously believing that Emma was intending to spend the whole day with her parents. Regina is curled up with a book, reading glasses perched on her nose, and wearing one of Emma's old oversized sweatshirts.

For a moment Emma stands and takes in the sight of the woman she's fallen in love with. Regina looks so small and _adorable_, and Emma feels a wave of protectiveness wash over her. She chuckles to herself, imagining how furious Regina would be to know that Emma finds her tiny and adorable and in need of protection.

"Hey, babe." Emma says walking into the yard.

Regina puts her glasses on the top of her head and scrunches her nose up in disgust. "What did you just call me?"

"You heard me _babe_," Emma says again, this time with the intention of pushing Regina's buttons a bit. Emma sits down, picks up Regina's arm and wraps it around herself.

Regina laughs, and Emma is struck by the sound: rich and warm and deep. She looks at Regina and is overwhelmed by the easy smile, the obvious happiness.

"Did you finish packing already?" Regina asks after Emma has settled her head in the crook of Regina's neck. There's a hint of uncertainty and fear in her voice, like she's afraid that Emma has changed her mind.

"Yep. You're stuck with me now."

Regina leans down and presses a kiss to Emma's hair. "I suppose I can handle that."

When Emma looks up a minute later she sees an expression of complete wonder on Regina's face. _No one _has ever looked at her like this before.

"Ok," Emma declares, because the look on Regina's face reassures Emma that for once she won't be abandoned. "We're going to do this."

Regina smiles. "Yes we are." Regina snakes her hands under Emma's shirt so that they rest on the small of her back. "You make me very happy, Emma." It's a weakness, Regina knows, to admit this, to admit how vulnerable she is to Emma, how much her lover could hurt her by walking away. "And I am very pleased," she ads with a smirk, "that you will be here all the time so that I will be able to have my way with you whenever I please."

Emma throws her head back in a laugh, feeling for the first time in her life like she is where she is meant to be. "Care to have your way with me right now?"

"Mmm," Regina murmurs as she presses her mouth to Emma's.

Emma's hands are reaching to unclasp Regina's bra. "Come on, dear. I would prefer to do this on a bed rather than this wooden bench."

"Your wish is my command." Emma stands and extends her hand to Regina.

* * *

"We should get dressed," Regina says as she lays on Emma's chest tracing random lines across her abdomen. "Henry will be home soon."

"What time?" Emma asks. She very much does not want to get out of bed.

"4:15."

"It's only 3:50. We have plenty of time."

"Fine," Regina agrees easily, much to Emma's surprise and happiness. Regina yawns and wraps her arms around her lover. "Tell me a story."

"A story? You're kidding right?"

"No I'm not."

"Any story I'm going to tell will end up being about real people that you know."

Regina chuckles. "Then tell me a story about you."

"A story about me?"

"Mmhmm. Tell me something that I don't know."

Emma wraps her arms around Regina. She loves her for asking. She loves her because she knows that no matter what she says Regina will still be there. "I used to want to be a figure skater." Regina props her head up to look at Emma. The thought of Emma in a figure skating outfit makes Regina smile. "Wipe that look off your face right now," Emma warns, "Or I won't finish telling my story."

"I'm sorry, dear. Go on."

"Kristi Yamaguchi was kind of my hero when I was 8, and I really wanted to skate. I had no idea how to get to an ice rink so I did the next best thing: I stole my foster brother's roller blades and tried to choreograph a routine that way." Emma smiles at Regina, whose eyes are alight at the mental image of young Emma trying to roller blade to classical music. "Sadly I never made it to the Olympics. I broke my ankle trying to do a jump, and it tragically ended my career early."

"Do you skate now?"

"Ice or roller?"

"Either."

"I've never ice skated actually."

"Are you serious?" Regina asks sounding absolutely appalled. "We'll have to go this weekend. Henry loves skating. He'll make an excellent teacher."

Emma smiles at Regina, oddly touched by Regina's insistence that they take a skating trip. "Come here," Emma says. She pulls Regina to her for a kiss. "I love you."

"I love you too."


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N: Thanks to everyone who's reading, and thanks for all the the feedback. It is very much appreciated. Here's a short little chapter of Swan-Mills family bonding time. Hope you enjoy it!_

* * *

"I think you lied about your skills," Emma complains as Regina finishes with a little jump and skates over to where Emma is clutching the wall.

"I said nothing of my skating abilities."

"Exactly. You told me that Henry was really good and could teach me."

"And is he not an excellent skater?" Regina asks, looking at where their son is zooming around the rink on his hockey skates.

"Humph. Misleading at best."

Regina presses an apologetic kiss to Emma's lips. "Can you forgive me?"

"I suppose," Emma says, trying her best to look annoyed with a straight face.

"What about now?" Another kiss.

"Keep that up and I might just forgive you." So Regina does. She places another kiss on Emma's lips, sucking on the bottom lip that Emma has stuck out in a pout. Regina moves on to kiss the skin behind Emma's ear and then to Emma's very ticklish neck.

Emma squeals at the sensation, and Regina laughs and wraps her arms around Emma. A few people are staring at them, and Emma is surprised by how little Regina seems to care.

"Are you ready to leave the wall yet?"

"I think I'm good right here."

Regina rolls her eyes. "Henry!" she calls as he turns the corner of the rink and starts skating towards them. Henry stops at his mothers' side, spraying them with ice. "Was that really necessary, dear?" Henry just smiles and looks rather pleased with himself. "Help me drag your mother off the wall."

Emma's breath hitches. She can hardly believe the words that came out of Regina's mouth. Henry catches it too, and he rewards Regina with a grateful smile.

"Come on, Ma." Henry grabs Emma's hand and promises, "We won't let you fall." Regina takes Emma's other hand, and together she and Henry pull a very reluctant Emma away from the wall.

"This isn't going to keep me from falling," Emma says, feeling fairly certain that a wipeout is in the near future. "It's just going to mean that we're all going to end up on the ice."

"You can fall towards me," Regina says. "I'll catch you." Emma shoots her a dubious look. "Or at least cushion your fall."

"I didn't know you were such a romantic," Emma tells Regina.

Regina and Henry slowly drag Emma around the rink. "How did you get so good at this anyway, Regina?" Emma asks.

"28 years is a lot of time to learn new skills," Regina responds without thought. But then she sees Henry do a double take, and she thinks that she really should be doing her best not to remind him of who she used to be.

"Is that how you learned to cook so well?" Henry asks. Regina actually laughs out loud in relief.

"Yes, sweetheart. I was actually a pretty terrible cook when I first got here."

"Because you had servants in the Enchanted Forest?"

Regina swallows hard and wonders whether she can really talk to Henry about the other world without reminding him of how much he used to hate her. "Yes."

"Why didn't you just get servants here?"

"I am perfectly capable of cooking and cleaning for myself." Cora's insistence on the importance of class and the idea that nobles should never dirty themselves with commoners' work had made Regina especially hate the idea of employing servants in her new life. "Having servants was something that I never wanted in any world, Henry."

"Then why did you have them? You were the queen. You could have done whatever you wanted."

Emma squeezes Regina's hand, knowing that Regina has just as much trouble as Emma does with admitting anything that feels like weakness. Regina had always preferred for people to think of her as evil than as a victim. But this is her son and she is so tired of him believing that she is evil. "The world that I grew up in was very different from this world."

"What do you mean?"

"For one thing, women didn't have very much power."

"Even queens?" Henry asks, turning to look at his mom, and causing all of them to wobble a little.

"Even queens," Regina says, and then solemnly, she adds, "I never wanted to be queen Henry."

"Then why did you become queen?" Henry asks, like it had been a career choice that Regina had made.

"It was an arrangement between my mother and the king."

"What?!" Henry stops short and throws them all off balance, and just as Emma had predicted they all land in a heap on the ice.

"Everyone ok?" Regina asks, because Emma seems to have landed pretty hard on her behind.

"Pretty sure that I'll be a lovely shade of purple in the morning, but otherwise fine," Emma says.

Regina leans over and whispers into Emma's ear, "I'll kiss it and make it better."

Emma chuckles and slides herself closer to Regina, because they both know Henry well enough to know that there is no way that he is just going to drop their conversation.

Sure enough, Henry scrambles next to Regina an instant later. "You had an arranged marriage?" She nods and reaches out to touch Henry's arm and try to soothe his obvious distress at hearing this. "I thought that everyone there married their true love."

Regina looks at her little boy, and she feels like she is shattering all his childhood fantasies. "I wasn't so lucky." She cups the side of his face, trying to somehow tell him that even if the world isn't what he thought it was, that he is loved and safe anyway.

"That's not fair," Henry says. And then to Regina's complete surprise Henry starts crying.

"Oh sweetie," Regina says, pulling Henry to her. She presses him against her chest and he cries harder. "It's ok."

"It's not fair," he sobs. "You should have married someone you loved." Regina's heart feels so full at how much her son loves her.

Regina kisses Henry's head. "Shh, it's alright. It just took me a little while longer to find my true love, that's all"

Emma's heart beats loudly in her ears. They've never used those words before, and she isn't even sure that she believes in such a thing. But sitting here on the wet ice watching Regina comfort their son, Emma thinks that she could begin to believe that true love is real.

Regina wipes the tears from Henry's cheeks. "You don't have to be sad. I'm not anymore," Regina says, only realizing how true the words are once she has spoken them. "I found my happy ending," she says with a grin. "You," she says as she leans forward to kiss Henry's forehead. "And you." Regina kisses Emma's forehead too before turning back to Henry. "Ok?"

Henry nods and then seems to realize that they're all sitting in the middle of an ice skating rink. "We should probably get up."

Emma gives Regina's waist another comforting squeeze. "Yeah," Emma agrees. "Think you could give me a hand kid?"

Henry pulls Emma up onto shaky legs. Regina stands too, brushing the ice off of her and taking Emma's hand.

"What do you two say to a little hot chocolate break?" Regina asks.

"Yes please," Emma says. "Can we get nachos too?" Regina scrunches up her nose at the mention of the neon orange goo that the skating rink tries to pass off as cheese. "More for me then."

"I'll share with you," Henry says.

"You'll steal all of mine. Get you own."

"Now, now children," Regina teases as she, Emma, and Henry step off the rink. They truly are her happy ending, and every day Regina is finding that it scares her a little bit less.


	18. Chapter 18

_A/N: Sorry that it took me so long to post this chapter. I struggled with it a bit, and so I would be especially grateful for feedback. Trigger warning for rape. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!_

* * *

Emma is of course ready for bed before Regina. For a woman who hasn't needed to worry about aging for decades Regina has a rather long and intricate moisturizing routine to go through every night before bed.

Emma pokes her head into Henry's room. He's sitting with a comic book on his lap, staring off into space. Emma knocks on the open door.

"You ready for bed?"

"I guess," he replies with a shrug and a frown.

Emma sits down on the side of the bed. "What's wrong?" she asks even though she has no doubt that he is still thinking about what Regina told him at the skating rink.

His face scrunches up just like Regina's when she is concentrating on finding the words to say something difficult. It makes Emma love Henry even more. She wonders if Regina feels the same way when she notices Emma's features in their child's face.

"Why didn't Mom ever tell me about why she married the king?"

"Kid," Emma sighs.

Henry watches Emma try to come up with an explanation, but he doesn't want to hear it. "No! Why didn't I know?" he yells, his voice breaking.

"Henry, there are some things that are very difficult to talk about. I think you're your mom's marriage was something that she just wanted to put behind her and not think about."

"He hurt her." It's not a question, but there's something uncertain in Henry's voice, as though he is begging Emma to tell him that it isn't true.

"Yeah, he did."

"I didn't know. The book didn't say why she did it." One of these days Emma is really going to get around to reading the whole book, because she can only guess what he is talking about. "I thought she was evil."

"She really isn't."

"I know," Henry says, looking pained and guilty.

"It's ok," Emma promises, reaching out to rub Henry's arm. "Your mom isn't mad at you. She loves you. We both do, ok?" Comforting him still feels a little strange, but she's learning everyday a little more of what it means to be Henry's mother in more than blood.

Regina walks into the room, oblivious to the tension and the previous conversation. Her face is wiped of makeup and as she makes herself comfortable on Henry's bed, it's hard for Emma to imagine Regina as anything besides a mother.

"How's the new issue?" Regina asks, indicating the comic on Henry's lap.

"Oh, it's good."

"Are you going to stay up and finish it?"

"Nah. I'm tired."

Well that's unheard of. "Henry, what's wrong?"

Henry throws his arms around Regina. "I love you," he says hugging her tightly and burying his face in his shoulder.

"I love you too," Regina tells Henry, rubbing his back. "My sweet little boy."

When Henry doesn't object to being called a little boy, Regina knows that he's really upset. She holds him tighter – her darling baby.

"What's wrong sweetheart?" Regina asks when Henry pulls back and looks at her again.

Henry presses his lips together uncertainly. "What is it?" Regina's fingers come to rest on Henry's chin, which quivers lightly with the strain of keeping from crying. Henry glances at Emma, and Regina tries to hide the pang of hurt as she asks, "Do you want me to go and let you talk to Emma?"

"No!" Henry replies quickly. He doesn't want his mom to go anywhere.

"Ok, sweetie," Regina coos.

She waits silently for a minute before Henry asks: "He deserved to die, didn't he?"

Regina tries to force the words out of her mouth: _No. No one deserves to die. _But she still hates him so fiercely for what he did to her. "Leopold wasn't a good man. I…" she takes a breath, because her son still knows so little of what she has done. "What I did was unforgivable, but I hope you can understand that I did what I did – I killed him – to escape and be free."

"I'm sorry Mommy. I didn't know."

Regina smiles at her son. "I know you didn't."

"I should never have said you were evil."

Tears fall from Regina's eyes, and she hurries to wipe them away. "It's ok, Henry. I've done terrible things, and I'm trying to make up for them as best as I can."

"But you aren't evil, and I should never have believed something that I read in a stupid book."

Henry starts crying, and Regina lifts his chin so that he's staring her in the eyes. "You don't have anything to be sorry for my dear. I've hurt you, and I am so sorry for that Henry. I hope that one day you'll be able to forgive me."

"I do forgive you Mom," Henry says so quickly that Regina can barely doubt the truth in those words.

Tears are falling down Regina's cheeks, and it becomes a struggle not to sob. This is more than she ever expected, more than she has dared to hope for since the curse broke.

"Thank you Henry," she manages to say, and then sniffling back more tears promises, "I promise that I'm going to be better."

"You already are," Henry says with a smile. "You were right before," Henry adds as the grin grows larger. "This is our happy ending. All three of us together. This is how it was meant to be."

* * *

After Henry falls asleep, Regina disappears into the bathroom. Emma gets into bed, deciding to give her lover a little time if she needs it. But then the sobs begin – loud enough that Emma can hear them through the bathroom door - and Emma refuses to let the woman she loves sit alone and cry.

Emma knocks tentatively at the door and is surprised to hear Regina rasp, "Come in."

Emma pushes the door open to find Regina sitting on the edge of the bathtub. She does nothing to hide the tears that coat her cheeks.

Regina looks up at Emma, who realizes that she didn't really have a plan beyond opening the door. But Regina stands and takes Emma's hand and leads them to bed. They sit against the headboard, hands still clasped together.

"Are you ok?" Emma asks as Regina allows the silence to settle over them.

Regina's voice is tiny when she whispers: "I'm happy." She turns to Emma with an expression of complete shock. "I've lived my whole life wanting this, and now I have it."

Emma shifts to wrap her arm around Regina's shoulders. "Yes, you do."

"Raising Henry was the first time in my entire life that I was truly happy. But I knew it would end. I tried not to think about it, but I knew that he would find out the truth and hate me." She stops talking, because wrapping her head around her son's forgiveness feels impossible. "But he doesn't."

Emma smiles. "No he doesn't. He loves you. We both do."

Regina tries to let it sink in.

"I've been thinking about the past today. Since I told Henry about Leopold, it's been rather difficult to put it out of my mind."

"You can tell me if you want to."

Regina looks at Emma, at the earnestness and love in her eyes. Regina has never breathed a word of this to anyone. Of course, people knew. Her maidservants had seen the blood on the sheets, had heard the occasional sobs when Regina couldn't hold back the cries of pain. And her father, though she had not said the words, her father must have known, must have seen it in her face, in the way his daughter disappeared. But speaking the words, acknowledging that someone had forced her to have sex, had violated her, had reduced her to tears and to weakness, was impossible. It was a shameful secret that she carried quietly for years.

"I've never told anyone before." Regina stares down at her lap, wondering how to do this.

"It's ok. I mean you don't have to tell me. I just thought that you might want to talk is all."

Regina wants to tell Emma – she wants to confide in Emma so badly – wants to have just one person in her life that she can truly trust. It is such a frightening prospect though for Regina to think about someone knowing this about her. But then, Emma already knows, and she's still here, she doesn't treat Regina like she's weak or should be pitied. It really is just a matter of saying the words.

"I try not to think about that time," Regina begins, wondering how to explain. "It felt like I was drowning everyday, like I was losing more and more of who I had been before I was the queen. Before I married Leopold, I was so hopeful. I knew how to love."

Emma watches tears fall down Regina's cheeks. "You still do, you know that right?"

"I love you Emma, and I promise that I am trying to do that well."

"Hey," Emma says, leaning over and kissing Regina. "You are."

"When I married Leopold, I believed that I could learn magic and use it to bring Daniel back. I just wanted to escape and be happy."

Emma presses her lips to Regina's temple. She keeps her forehead rested on Regina as the brunette keeps talking.

"After Rumple took that hope from me, I had nothing left. I learned magic, and I became more and more angry every day." Regina feels the anger overcome her now. "I felt so powerless. I _was_ so powerless. I wanted to kill Leopold every night."

Regina feels nauseous. The anger and humiliation she feels at the memories of those nights is overwhelming. Emma is so close, holding Regina's hand tightly, and Regina wishes that she didn't feel so ashamed. But she can feel Leopold's hands on her, squeezing her breasts so hard that he would leave marks as she lay there not fighting, not stopping him.

Regina pulls her body away from Emma. It feels like too much right now. Emma moves away instantly, and Regina is overcome with a sense of loss. "I'm sorry," Regina whispers. She wants Emma back against her, because she feels so lost right now, like the woman she is now is slipping away against the specter of the young woman who had lain beneath the king.

Regina wraps her arm around Emma, needing that comfort back for the words she is about to say. "Sometimes I can still feel him. It's ridiculous because it has been so long."

Emma swallows hard. She hadn't planned to say this, but Regina needs something from Emma. Regina needs to not be the only one willing to be vulnerable. "One of my foster fathers tried…he didn't even succeed, and I still have nightmares." Regina looks devastated. "It's ok," Emma says quickly, not wanting to talk about this further. "I just mean that I understand that forgetting isn't easy."

Regina nods, understands Emma's desire not to talk further. Regina runs her hands up and down Emma's arm, the repetitive motion and her lover's proximity a comfort to her, and she hopes it is to Emma as well.

"He never asked. He just came into my bedchambers and removed my clothes. I was a child when I was first married." Regina hates acknowledging that she was ever a scared, innocent girl. Her throat burns with tears that she cannot allow to fall. "I was so…" Regina's voice breaks, and her hand flies to her mouth. "I was so scared the first time. I still remember my wedding night. He didn't say a word to me. He just took what was his while I lay there crying."

Regina takes a few deep breaths and steadies herself. Emma's hand has a death grip on Regina's side. "It became easier. After a while, it didn't matter at all."

Emma lays her head on Regina's shoulder, nuzzling closer. "It mattered. It does matter."

"I didn't want to be the person I became, Emma."

"I know."

"I tried to fight the anger and the darkness, but I forgot what goodness was. I was trapped there – a toy for your mother and grandfather. Snow wanted a new mother, and Leopold wanted a warm body. A warm body to hold down and pretend wasn't even a person. I wanted to be good, but I just felt so helpless and angry. It's not an excuse, but I promise that even if I never really have been, that I _wanted_ to be good."

Emma hates the look on Regina's face. She looks guilty, caught up by how she had lost herself.

"I am so sorry," Emma says, running her fingers through Regina's hair. "God, I am so sorry Regina."

"I used to be good."

"You _are _good." Regina scowls at Emma. "You are. Doing bad things doesn't make you evil. People change Regina. And look at you now, you even love me. And that is no easy task."

Even though it's a joke, Regina understands that Emma means it – that Emma feels unlovable. Regina hugs Emma tighter against her chest. Hands weave themselves into blonde locks. "I do love you very much, but that my dear is impossible for me not to do."

Here in the safety of their bed they can be open and kind in ways that they have never allowed themselves to be. Regina kisses the crown of Emma's head. "Thank you, Emma. Having someone know these things feels..." Regina shakes her head, overcome by the emotion. It feels good. Peaceful. Intimate. "This is more than I deserve."

Emma shrugs. "If that's true then it's more than I deserve too."

"Em-"

"No. Listen. I'm getting a second chance to raise the kid I put up for adoption. Henry found me when I was finally ready for him. You loved him and raised him his whole life. I don't deserve to be a parent to him now."

"That isn't true. I know that we fought over him, and I said a lot of things that weren't true."

"Maybe they were true. Maybe I don't deserve him in my life. But you two let me into your lives anyway. I got this pre-made, perfect family."

"Perfect?" Regina asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Perfect enough. Kid. Woman I love."

Regina chuckles. "We are doing pretty well considering that we are…"

"Such fucked up people?"

"Eloquently stated."

Emma shrugs. "It's true." A wave of anxiety settles over Emma, because Regina – for however fucked up she is – was able to share something hugely personal with Emma. It's a kind of disclosure that Emma isn't sure that she is capable of. "Here's the thing Regina," Emma blurts out nervously. "I've never told anyone about my childhood."

"And you don't need to, my dear. I didn't tell you about Leopold because I was trying to get something out of you."

"I know. It's just…you trusted me. And I don't want you to think that I don't trust you too."

"I don't think that. You never need to tell me, and I will love you just as much as I do right now. And you can tell me anything, and I will love you just as much. None of that matters as long as I get to have you."

Emma feels choked up. She has never felt so accepted and so loved.

"It hurts so much to think about," Emma says with a tiny sob.

"I know."

"I want to tell you, I do. I just can't right now, but it isn't because of you. I'll try, I promise."

"You don't need to try," Regina assures Emma, snuggling the blonde safely against her chest. "I don't need you to do anything that you don't want to do, and you don't need to be afraid that I'm going to leave. I have many flaws Emma, but I don't give up on the people that I love."

Emma hugs Regina tightly. She has never been more grateful for Regina's stubborn refusal to let go. The possessiveness that Regina had demonstrated when she and Emma were fighting over Henry had been infuriating. But the thought of Regina feeling that way about her makes Emma's heart ache with the possibility of finally having someone who won't leave her.

"Thank you," Emma whispers.

"No, thank _you_, Emma."

"You don't need to thank me."

"I do. You're still here."

"Yeah, I am."

"And you don't…" Regina trails off, running her fingers lightly over Emma's arm. She doesn't understand how Emma is looking at her exactly as she had before Regina told her about her past.

"What?" Emma asks, shifting to look at Regina.

"It's nothing dear." Regina smiles and pulls Emma down so that she is lying in Regina's arms.

Silence slips around them. Emma continues to scrutinize Regina. "It's nothing. I promise. I'm just lucky and very happy."

"Yeah, me too."

* * *

They wake up with limbs intertwined still clutching one another. "Morning," Emma mumbles from where she is cradled into Regina's chest.

"Good morning," Regina replies sleepily. Her arms reach to encircle Emma, making the blonde feel ridiculously safe. Emma nuzzles her face into Regina, earning Emma a deep chuckle.

"How did you sleep?" Regina asks.

"Good. Not long enough though. You?"

"Quite well actually."

"No dreams?" Suddenly it feels ok to ask because those dreams are not a secret anymore. Emma can image what Regina is seeing when she screams in her sleep.

"No, you?"

"Nope. Slept great. What do you say that we reset the alarm and get another half hour?"

Regina catches Emma's arm as she leans over towards the alarm clock.

"Have you forgotten that you promised Henry that you would cook him breakfast?"

Emma groans loudly and pulls the blankets over their heads. "Pleeaase. Five more minutes." Emma presses her face into Regina's neck, kissing gently at her pulse point.

"Five minutes, and then we are getting up and waking Henry. He's worse than you are in the morning."

"Henry's 11. He can definitely get ready on his own."

Regina shrugs. "He still lets me be the tickle monster in the morning. Soon he'll be too old for it, and I just want to have that with him while I can."

Emma kisses Regina gratefully. "Five more minutes of lying here. Then you can wake up Mr. Grumpypants while I start on breakfast."

* * *

"Need any help?"

"Honestly Regina, even I can make omelets."

"I'm sorry for insulting your culinary skills my dear." Regina walks up behind Emma and slides her arms around her lover's waist. "I just thought that you might want some assistance chopping vegetable. But I don't mind staying right here." Regina begins pressing a series of maddening kisses to Emma's shoulder and neck.

"You are evil," Emma teases.

Regina moves to stand besides Emma, one arm still wrapped around Emma's waist. Regina pops a few pieces of diced red pepper in her mouth.

"First you try to distract me, and now you're going to eat all the ingredients before I can finish cooking."

"Like you said, I'm evil."

"Hi Moms!" Henry says, bouncing down the stairs with his backpack.

"Moms?" Emma asks. "That's new."

"Plural of Mom. And I have two of you, so it makes sense."

"I like it," Regina declares, knowing that Emma is worrying that Regina will be offended. But this all feels too right for jealousy. "Would you like everything in your omelet?"

"Yes please," Henry says, dropping his backpack on the floor and hopping up on the kitchen counter next to the stove. He reaches for a handful of red peppers.

"You're just as bad as your mom!" Emma declares as she pulls the bowl of peppers away from Henry and Regina. "Leave some for the omelets."

Regina and Henry share a conspiratory look, and Emma knows what's coming but does nothing to stop it when Regina tickles her and Henry makes a run for the peppers.

And no, there are no red peppers left by the time the eggs are poured into the skillet. But all three of them are giggling and smiling like fools, and so Emma decides to let it slide.


	19. Chapter 19

"Keep going Regina."

She claws at the leather of Archie's couch. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I want to hurt someone."

"Who?"

Regina shakes her head. "I can't do this again. I cannot let myself become the Evil Queen."

"You can let yourself be angry without hurting people."

She wonders if that's true.

"Can you tell me who you're angry at?"

"Everyone." It's evasive and Regina knows that Archie won't let her get away with it. "I'm angry at my parents and Leopold and Gold." She stops and breathes, and then in a small voice that Archie has to struggle to hear says, "I'm angry at myself. I let them manipulate me. I let them win."

"I'd like to talk about that. About your anger at yourself."

"I'm weak. I know that." Regina growls the words at him.

"I don't believe that, Regina."

"I let my mother back in. I fought to keep her out of Storybrooke, and then the minute she stepped foot into this town I let her control my life again."

"That's not weakness."

"What _would_ you call it?"

"I would call it the very human desire to have love in your life."

Regina feels like she can barely breathe. She wants so badly to be loved. "I am loved now," she says out loud, a reminder to herself of something that she feels constantly afraid to lose.

Archie smiles at Regina. "Yes you are."

"I was so angry for so long, and I cannot let that touch Emma and Henry."

"I think that talking through the anger is what will allow you to keep it from touching them. You have every right to be angry for what was done to you."

"I want to let go of all that. Thinking about it makes me crazy, and I just want to be good enough for them."

"Being angry doesn't make you bad." Archie leans forward in his chair, and Regina hates the way that his eyes bore into her. "You just need to find ways to channel those feelings so that you don't hurt yourself or anyone else."

"And what do you suggest?" Regina asks with a glare at Archie. He should know Regina well enough to know that restraint has never been her strong suit.

"Well, people find different things that work for them. Some people choose to hit a pillow or smash old plates. Or some people take up a sport like kickboxing."

"Are you serious? Kickboxing? I have magic, and you think that I'm going to be able to control it once I let myself feel those things again?"

"Yes I do."

"Then you're an idiot."

"No I'm not. I believe that you are stronger than you think you are. You were able to control yourself the night you broke the mirrors in your house."

"Emma walked into the room."

"Then it seems that she or Henry would provide a good way to keep you grounded. Tell me, Regina, why didn't you kill Snow when she asked you to?"

"I couldn't do that to Emma."

Archie smiles softly at Regina. "Don't you see how much control and strength that required? You let the woman who killed your mother live."

"I took Emma's mother from her once before, and I am not going to hurt her like that again."

"That is strength, Regina. It's why I believe that you can handle working through the anger you have." Regina looks entirely unconvinced. "Perhaps it would even help you to have Emma in the room with you."

"I don't want her to see me like that."

"Being angry about the fact that your mother abused you is not something to be ashamed of."

"I don't want Emma to know anymore of who I used to be."

"For homework this week, I would like you to tell Emma one thing that you are ashamed of."

Regina laughs wryly. "This weekend I told her about how Leopold raped me night after night. Do you think I could have a bit of a respite from sharing for a few days?"

"I didn't know that. Would you like to tell me what happened?"

"Henry was asking questions and I told him that I had an arranged marriage. He was quite upset about it."

"You sound surprised."

"I spent 10 years hiding who I was from Henry because I was certain that he would hate me if he found out." Grateful tears burn Regina's eyes. "He told me that I wasn't evil and that I deserve a happy ending." She's sobbing, and she knows there is mascara running down her face. She must look like a complete mess. "He knows who I am, and he still wants me to be his mom."

"I am very happy for you Regina. I know that you've worked very hard to rebuild your relationship with your son."

Regina nods.

"And what did you and Emma discuss?"

Regina can't meet Archie's eyes. The memories of Leopold make her feel so weak. "I told her about what it was like to be married to Leopold."

"You've never talked about your marriage here. Would you like to tell me more about it?"

Regina's voice is unsteady as she says, "Can we wait until next week? I don't want to go back there again."

"Of course, Regina. This is a safe place, and I am not going to push you to talk about anything that you don't feel ready for."

Regina nods gratefully.

"I have a date with Emma tonight."

Archie senses that Regina needs to focus on something positive so he asks, "Where are you two going?"

"I'm taking her to the carnival."

"That sounds like a fun evening."

"I hope it will be. Emma has had a lot to worry about recently, and I want to give her a chance to relax and enjoy herself."

"It sounds like a nice opportunity for both of you to do that."

"Yes, I believe so as well."

* * *

"Why are we at a carnival run by nuns?" Emma asks as her smiling girlfriend drags her towards the bright lights and loud noise.

"Because it's the only carnival in Storybrooke."

"Ok…so why are we at a carnival?"

"Because they're fun. We are going to eat junk food, go on rides that make us want to throw-up, and play games that are impossible to win."

This Regina, the carefree one who Emma had first caught a glimpse of when they left Storybrooke, makes Emma fall impossibly more in love. "Is that a challenge? Because you know I can't resist a challenge."

"Am I not enough of a challenge for you anymore?"

"Nah. You're my girl," Emma says looping her arm through Regina's.

Regina's laugh rings out, deep and rich, into the night air. She seems undaunted by the fact that a few dwarves are gaping at her and Emma. "Come along then, dear. There's cotton candy and funnel cake waiting."

"How did I not know that you have a serious sweet tooth?"

"I hide my chocolate stash behind the bran flakes."

"How could you keep that a secret from me?!"

"Yes dear, you're very welcome for sharing my secret with you."

Emma rolls her eyes and offers a dramatic, "Thank you Regina."

"I expect that my stash will remain well stocked."

"Yes, Regina."

Regina silences the sarcasm with a kiss.

"Is this how you're going to shut me up now?"

Regina kisses Emma again before asking, "Is that a problem?"

"Nope. It might encourage me to argue with you more though."

Regina chuckles. She, Emma, and Henry might just be three of the most stubborn, opinionated people in the world. Living under one roof permanently, well that is bound to be interesting.

* * *

"Why didn't you tell me that you were afraid of heights?" Regina asks. They're stopped at the top of the Ferris wheel, and Emma's body is completely stiff besides Regina.

Emma shrugs. "You were so excited."

"That's very sweet of you my dear, but next time just tell me if my idea of a romantic date is going to cause you to have a panic attack."

It's the lack of a witty comeback that makes Regina know that Emma is really afraid.

"Come here," Regina coaxes, pulling Emma against her chest. The seat shakes with the motion, and Emma's heart begins beating so rapidly the Regina can feel it against her arms. "It's ok. Close your eyes."

Regina runs her hands through Emma's hair. "Do you know how I'm going to make this up to you?"

Regina can feel Emma's ragged breaths against her neck. "I'm going to take you home and lay you down in our bed. Then I'm going to unbutton your shirt, slowly, one button at a time. Maybe I'll see if I can manage without using my hands. I'll take off your bra, and then, well you know how much I can't resist you once I get your top off."

Emma moans softly into Regina's neck.

"The jeans will have to go next," Regina whispers against Emma's ear. "And then…"

"Then what?"

"Oh would you look at that?" Regina says, moving to stand. "The ride's over."

Regina extends a hand to Emma who stands and follows her outside the gates of the ride. "Cotton candy?" Regina asks.

"Not a chance. You better make good on your promise."

"What promise would that be?" Regina smirks.

Emma stares her dead in the eyes. "You undressing me with your teeth. Now are we going home or are we going to make out behind the bleachers like a couple of horny teenagers."

"Very well," Regina says, feigning indifference. But Emma knows that Regina is every bit as anxious to get out of here as she is. "Take me home."

Emma kisses Regina fiercely before pulling her towards their car. "Yes ma'am. Your wish is my command."


	20. Chapter 20

_A/N: A short little final chapter of this story. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the ending. Trigger warning for rape._

* * *

"We don't have to do this today," Emma insists as Regina tugs at her shirt.

"I'm fine Emma."

Regina has Emma's shirt off in no time, her mouth sucking at Emma's breast.

Emma moans loudly before flipping Regina over. Emma's hand finds it's way up Regina's nightshirt and presses against a thin layer of lace.

Regina freezes.

"Oh God!" Emma moves off of Regina immediately. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She looks at Regina in horror. Emma knew she shouldn't have touched Regina today, not on her wedding anniversary.

Regina blinks furiously, trying to clear the images of the past from her mind. She can hear her blood pounding in her ears. Emma is looking at her with fear and remorse.

Regina sits up, straightening out her nightclothes. "I'm sorry, Regina," Emma repeats.

"What are you sorry for?" Regina snaps. "I told you that I wanted you to touch me."

Regina bites back the anger. It isn't meant for Emma, but today it seems to permeate the very air that Regina breathes. "I'm sorry Emma. I shouldn't have yelled at you."

"It's ok," Emma says, trying and failing to catch Regina's gaze. "What can I do?"

"I don't know," Regina sighs, looking over at the window and away from Emma. She's embarrassed by her reaction, uncomfortable with how much pain she is in.

Emma wants to touch Regina, to reach out and comfort, but she doesn't want to be the one to initiate touching today.

As though Regina can sense this, she takes one of Emma's hands in her own. Their hands rest on Regina's abdomen while the brunette continues staring out the window.

Because hearing these words makes pain more bearable for Emma, she tells Regina, "I love you."

"I love you too."

"I wasn't prepared for today," Regina says finally looking at Emma again. "It's never bothered me much before, but it seems that since I've been talking with you and Archie I'm having more trouble ignoring the past."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Can I…" Regina trails off feeling a little silly at the thought of her request, "Can I hold you?"

Emma scoots her body over as Regina opens her arms. Emma lays her head on Regina's chest. "I'll be your teddy bear anytime."

Regina laughs, and she wonders how she can be laughing when the memories still feel like poison. But Emma is here – lying on Regina's chest, reaching up to press a kiss to Regina's mouth, telling Regina that she loves her – and somehow that makes Regina feel strong enough to face the past.

Face the past, and maybe, Regina thinks, as she concentrates on the rhythmic rise and fall of Emma's chest, enjoy the future.

* * *

"You're going to burn," Regina warns when she comes home one afternoon to find Emma lying on the hammock in the backyard in a bikini.

Emma picks her head up to look at Regina. "Will you still think I'm hot if I look like a lobster?"

"I've always found this world's wildlife quite attractive."

Emma lets out a very unladylike snort of laughter that Regina can't seem to help but find endearing.

Regina kicks off her shoes and lies down on the hammock, pulling Emma into her arms.

Regina's eyes focus on the thin scar on Emma's shoulder that appears almost silver in the bright sunlight. Regina has the sudden urge to kiss it, just as she had kissed Henry's every hurt. She presses her lips to the line of slightly thickened tissue, touching it gently, lovingly.

"Don't," Emma protests, shaking her head.

"I'm sorry," Regina whispers, pressing her lips to Emma's in contrition. Regina tucks a strand of Emma's hair behind her ear. "I'm sorry," she repeats, looking at Emma.

Regina's gaze is too intense, too knowing. This is a woman intimately familiar with pain, and Emma continues to feel slightly overwhelmed by having someone in her life who understands what deep, wounding hurt feels like. Emma doesn't realize that she's crying until Regina is wiping tears from her cheeks.

Emma leans over to lay her head on Regina's shoulder. She feels calmed by the way Regina's arms wrap protectively around her. Emma watches the clouds up above them drifting slowly across the sky and wonders at the feeling of peace that settles over her. She wonders if it really is possible for two incredibly hurt people to heal together.

"That scar is from a fight I got into at a group home when I was 13. I stole another kid's watch and pawned it. I picked the wrong person though, because she came after me with a knife. We got into it, and I ended up being labeled as unadoptable after that."

Regina's chest aches at the pain her lover has suffered. She wishes she had the power to take the hurt away.

"I love you, Emma."

The simple words feel like all Emma could ever hope for. Her eyes fill with tears. "My whole life, all I ever wanted was someone to love me."

"You have that now. You have a family that loves you, and you have me." Regina kisses Emma's forehead. "You'll always have me."

"You count as family, you know. You and Henry feel more like family than anyone ever has before."

Family is far from a simple topic for Regina, but she thinks that maybe she and Emma and Henry can be the kind of family that she never had before. The kind that takes care of each other instead of hurts each other.

"I will never forgive myself for ruining your childhood," Regina says sincerely,"But if you want me, Emma, I promise to make sure that you never are without a family again."

Emma can't contain the tears that stream down her cheeks. "Don't be an idiot, you know I want you."

"Ok then dear," Regina says, feeling a smile tug at the corners of her lips, "You're stuck with me."

Emma smiles at Regina through her tears. Regina's eyes are shining joyfully, and Emma realizes that for the first time in her life, the idea of forever doesn't scare her. Emma weaves her fingers with Regina's. "Family," she whispers.

Regina nods and squeezes Emma's hand. "Family."


End file.
